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EDGAR ALLAN POE 



POEMS 



BY 



/ 



P:DGAR ALLAN POK 



AUTHOR or ■ WEIKD TALES, ETC. 




A^ 



PHILADELPHIA^ 

HENRY ALTEMUS 
1895 



N~ 



IN UNIFORM STYLE. 

Evangeline. Henry W. Longfellow. 

Poems. Edgar Allan Poe. 

Marmion. Walter Scott. 

Lalla Eookh. Thomas ]\Ioore. 

I'ocms. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Princess and ]\laud. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 

Lady of the Lake. Walter Scott. 

Childe Harold. Lord Byron. 

Poems. W^illiam Cullen Bryant. 

Idylls of the King. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. j 

Belfry of Bruges. Henry W. Longfellow. 

Voices of the Night. Henry V/. Longfellow. 

Whittier's Poems. In 2 volumes. 

Lucile. Owen Meredith. 



Cloth, handsome, new and original design, 
full gilt, gilt tops, attractively boxed $0.75 

Half Crushed Levant, super extra hand fin- 
ished, untrimmed edges, sewn with silk, 
gilt tops 1.50 

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finished, new ornamental inlaid hacks, un- 
trimmed edges, sewn with sillc, gilt tops... 2.00 



Copyrighted, 1 895, by Henry Altemus. 



CONTENTS. 








The Poe fry of Edgar All im Poe, . . . xi 


POEMS. 


To Helen 27 


The Raven, 


. 




2S 


The Valley of Unrest, 


. 






S6 


Bridal Ballad, 


• 






3S 


The Sleeper, . 


. 






40 


The Coliseiiin, . 


. 






43 


Lenore, 


. 






46 


Catholic Hymn, 








49 


Jsrafel, . 








50 


Dreamland, 








53 


Sonnet : To Zante, . 








5(> 



viii CONTENTS. 








The City m the Sea, 








PAGE 

57 


To One in Pcwadise, 
Eulalie, 










60 
62 


To F s S. d. 










. 64 


To F , . 










6s 


Sonnet: Sitejtce, 










66 


The Conqueror Worm, 










67 


\i he Haunted Palace, 










6q 


Scenes from "■ Politian,'' 










73 



POEMS WRPTTEN IN YOUTH. 

Sonnet : To Science, 10 1 

Al Aaraaf, 102 

Tamerlane, 122 

A Drea?n, /jz 

Romance, ij2 

Fairyland, . , jjj 

To , 135 

To the River , ...... 136 

The Lake. To , , : . . . ijj 

Song, ........ J38 



CONTENTS. ix 

LATER POEMS. 

PAGE 

A Dream Wit kin a Dream, .... 141 

The Bells, . .142 

To Helen, i^y 

A Valentine /jro 

A7i Enigma, ' . 1^2 

T^ ^53 

To My Mother - .75-5 

Eldorado, j^6 

To . 1^8 

To M. L. S 759 

For Annie, 160 

Ulalume z^j- 

Annabel Lee, itg 

The Poetic Principle 77/ 



THE 
POETRY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

The life of Edgar Allan Poe is, fortunately, a 
subject that but little concerns readers of his 
poetry. As far as the events of his career illus 
trate the enigmatic character of his genius, we 
have, perhaps, a right to inquire about them. We 
may imagine that from parents of semi-Celtic stock 
and artistic profession he inherited his genius, and 
that his pride and perversity came from his train- 
ing by a wealthy, injudicious foster-father. But 
the legend or myth of his errors and misfortunes, 
so often told and retold by posthumous malice or 
by too fond indulgence, is really no affair of ours. 
Poe's career is still a topic that excites controversy 
in America. The spite of his first biographer, 
Griswold, was begetting a natural reaction when 
Mr. Ingram published his "Edgar Allan Poe" 
(London, 1880), and unwittingly stirred up the 
hatred of surviving scandal-mongers. Men are 
alive who knew Poe, and who suffered from his 
scornful criticism. To find their dead enemy 
defended by an Englishman excited their spleen, 
and, for other reasons, fairer American critics 
were not conciliated. The defense of this luckless 



xii THE POETRY OF 

man of genius is not, and cannot be a wholly 
successful one. The viler charges and insinua- 
tions of Griswold may be refuted, but no skill can 
make Poe seem an amiable or an ascetic human 
being. It is natural that admirers of a poet's 
genius should wish to think well of the man, 
should wish to see him among the honorable, gen- 
tle, kindly and wise. But Poe wanted as a man 
what his poetry also lacks ; he wanted humanity. 
Among the passions, he was familiar with pride, 
and vdth the intolerable regret, the life-long 
desiderhtm which, having lost the solitary object 
of its love, can find among living men and M'omen 
no more than the objects of passing sentiment and 
affectionate caprice. Love, as the poets have 
known it, from Catullus to Coventry Patmore, 
love, whether wild and feverish or stable and do- 
mestic, appears to have been to him unknown. 
And by this it is not meant that Poe was not an 
affectionate husband of his wife, but that the 
stronger i3art of his affections, the better element 
of his heart, had burned away before he was a man. 
He knew what he calls ' ' that sorrow which the 
living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in 
some minds, resembles the delirium of opium." 
His spirit was always beating against the gate of 
the grave, and the chief praise he could confer on 
a woman in his maturity was to compare her to 
one whom he had lost while he was still a boy. 
"For months after her decease," says Mr. Ingram, 



EDGAR ALLAN FOE. xiii 

* ' Poe . . . would go nightly to visit the tomb of 
his revered friend, and when the nights were very- 
drear and cold, when the autumnal rains fell, and 
the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he 
lingered longest and came away most regret- 
fully." 

The truth of this anecdote would be more im- 
portant for our purpose than a world of controver- 
sies as to whether Poe was expelled from school, 
or gambled, or tippled, or why he gave up the 
editorship of this or that journal. We see him pre- 
occupied, even in his boyhood, with the thought 
of death and of the condition of the dead. In his 
prose romanceshis imagination is always morbidly 
busy with the secrets of the sepulchre. His dead 
men speak, his corpses hold long colloquies with 
themselves, his characters are prematurely buried 
and explore the veiled things of corruption, his 
lovers are led wandering among the hie jacets of 
the dead. This is the dominant note of all his 
poetry, this wistful regret, almost hopeless of any 
reunion of departed souls in " the distant Aidenn," 
and almost fearful that the sleep of the dead is 
not dreamless. 

*'The lady sleeps ! Qh may her sleep. 
Which is efiduriftg, so be deep ! 

I pray to God that she may lie 

Forever with luiopeiied eye, 

While the dim sheeted ghosts go by F" 



xiv THE POETR V OF 

Thus Poe's verse is so far from being a " criti- 
cism of life," that it is often, in literal earnest, a 
criticism of death ; and even when his thoughts are 
not busy with death, even when his heart is not 
following some Lenore or Annabel Lee or Ulalume, 
his fancy does not deal with solid realities, with 
human passions. He dwells in a world more va- 
porous than that of Shelley's "Witch of Atlas," 
in a region where dreaming cities crumble into 
fathomless seas, in a fairyland with "dim vales 
and shadowy woods," in haunted palaces, or in a 
lost and wandering star. 

Not only was Poe's practice thus limited, but 
his theory of poetry was scarcely more extensive. 
He avowed that "melancholy is the most legiti- 
mate of all the poetical tones." This preference 
was, doubtless, caused by Poe's feeling that 
melancholy is the emotion most devoid of actual 
human stuff, the most etherealized, so to speak, 
the least likely to result in action. Poetry he 
defined as "the rhythmical creation of beauty," 
and beauty was in his eyes most beautiful when it 
was least alloyed with matter. Thus such topics 
as war, patriotism, prosperous love, religion, duty, 
were absolutely alien to the genius of Poe. He 
carried his theory to the absurd length of pre- 
ferring Fouque's " Undine" to the works of "fifty 
Molieres. " There is no poet more full of humanity 
than Moliere. and no creature of fancy so empty 
as Undine, a sprite who is no more substantial 



EDGAR ALLAN FOE. xv 

than a morning shower, a vapor more evanescent 
than a solar myth. Poe, who liked the melancholy- 
moods of this waste-watery sprite better than all 
the mirth and tenderness and passion of the 
Mascarilles and Alcestes, the Don Juans and 
Tartuff es, was also of opinion that no poem could 
be long. The" Iliad" and the "Odyssey^"^ Ee 
thought were mistakes ; they carried too heavy a 
weight of words and matter. When examined, 
this theory or paradox of Poe's shrinks into the 
common place observations that Poe preferred 
lyric poetry and that lyrics are essentially brief. 
In considering Poe's theory and practice, we must 
not forget that both were, in part, the result of 
reaction. American literature then intended to be 
extremely moral, and respectable, and didactic, 
and much of it was excessively uninspired. Poetry 
was expected, as she so often is expected, to teach 
morality as her main duty. We have always 
plenty of critics who cry out that poetry should 
be "palpitating with actuality," should struggle 
with " the living facts of the hour," should dignify 
industrialism, and indite paeans, perhaps, to 
sewing-machines and patent electric lights. Poe's 
nature was essentially rebellious, scornful, and 
aristocratic. If democratic ecstasies are a tissue 
of historical errors and self-complacent content 
with the commonplace, no one saw that more 
clearly than Poe. Thus he was the more encour- 
aged by his rebellious instinct to take up what 



xvi THE POETRY OF 

was then a singular and heterodox critical position, 
He has lately been called immoral in America for 
writing these words: "Beyond the limits of 
beauty the province of poetry does not extend. 
Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or 
the conscience it has only collateral relations. It 
has no dependence, unless incidentally, upon 
either duty or truth." 

To any one who believes that the best, the 
immortal poetry, is nobly busied with great 
actions and great passions, Poe's theory seems 
fatally narrow. Without the conceptions of duty 
and truth we can have no ''Antigone" and no 
"Prometheus." These great and paramount 
ideas have always been the inspirers of honorable 
actions, and by following them men and women 
are led into the dramatic situations which are 
the materials of Shakespeare, ^schjdus, and 
Homer. There is an immortal strength in the 
stories of great actions; but Poe in theory and 
practice disdains all action and rejects this root 
of immortality. He deliberately discards sanity, 
he deliberately chooses fajitasy, for his por- 
tion. Now, while it is not the business of poetry 
to go about distributing tracts, she can never 
neglect actions and situations which, under her 
spell, become unconscious lessons of morality. 
But, as we have said, Poe's natural bent, and 
his reaction against the cheap didactic criticism 
of his country and his time, made him neglect 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. xvii 

all actions and most passions, both in his practice 
and his theory. When he spoke of Keats as the 
most flawless of English poets, and of Mr. Tenny- 
son as "the noblest poet that ever lived," he was 
attracted by that in them which is most magical, 
most intangible, and most undefinable — the 
inimitable and inexpressible charm of their music, 
by the delicious languor of the ' ' Ode to the 
Nightingale" and of the " Lotus-Eaters." These 
poems are, indeed, examples of the "rhythmical 
creation of beauty," which, to Poe's mind, was 
the essence and function of poetry. 

As to the nature of Poe's secret and the 
technique by which he produced his melodies, 
much may be attributed to the singular musical 
appropriateness of his words and epithets, much 
to his elaborate care for the details of his art. 
George Sand, in "Un Hiver a Majorque," 
describes a rainy night which Chopin passed in 
the half-ruinous monastery where they lived. 
She tells us how the melodies of the wind and 
rain seemed to be magically transmuted into his 
music, so that, without any puerile attempt at 
direct imitation of sounds, his compositions were 
alive with the air of the tempest. "Son genie 
etait plein des mysterieuses harmonies de la nature 
traduites par des equivalents sublimes dans sa 
pensee musicale, et non par une repetition servile 
des sons exterieurs." In Poe's genius, too, there 
was a kind of pre-established harmony between 



xviii THE POETRY OF 

musical words and melancholy thoughts. As Mr. 
Saintsbury points out to me, though" his language 
not unfrequently passes from vagueness into mere 
unmeaningness in the literal and grammatical 
sense of it, yet it never fails to convey the proper 
suggestion in sound if not in sense. Take the 
lines in ' Ulalume:' 

' // was 7iight m the lonesoine October 
Of my most immemorial year.' 

Here it would puzzle the most adroit student of 
words to attach a distinct usual sense authen- 
ticated by lexicons, to 'immemorial.' And yet 
no one with an ear can fail to see that it is 
emphatically the right word, and supplies the 
necessary note of suggestion." As to Poe's 
management of his metres, one cannot do better 
than quote Mr. Saintsbury' s criticism again. 
"The same indefinite but intensely poetic effect 
is produced still more obviously by Poe's manage- 
ment of his metres. Every one who is acquainted 
with his critical work knows the care (a care that 
brought on him the ridicule of sciolists and 
poetasters) which he bestowed on metrical subjects. 
' The Raven,' ' Ulalume,' ' The Haunted Palace,' 
' Annabel Lee,' ' For Annie,' are, each in its own 
way, metrical marvels, and it is not till long 
after we have enjoyed and admired the beauty of 
each as a symphony that we discern the exquisite 



EDGAR ALLAN FOE. xix 

selection and skillful juxtaposition of the parts 
and constituent elements of each. Every one of 
these remains unapproached and uncopied as a 
concerted piece. In 'The Haunted Palace,' the 
metre, stately at the beginning, slackens and dies 
towards the close. In 'Annabel Lee ' and ' For 
Annie,' on the contrary, there is a steady cre- 
scendo from first to last, while, in the two other 
pieces the metre ebbs and flows at uncertain but 
skillfully arranged intervals. Poe stands almost 
alone in this arrangement of his lyric works as a 
whole. With most poets the line or the stanza 
is the unit, and the length of the poem is deter- 
mined rather by the sense than by the sound. But 
with Poe the music as well as the sense (even 
more than the sense, perhaps) is arranged and 
projected as a whole, nor would it be possible to 
curtail or omit a stanza without injuring the 
metrical as well as the intelligible effect." 

To a critic who himself feels that the incom- 
municable and inexpressible charm of melodious 
words is of the essence of song, Poe's practice is 
a perpetual warning. It is to verse like Poe's, so 
deficient as it is in all merit but lyric music and 
vague emotion, so devoid of human passion — a 
faint rhythmical echo among the stars and 
graves of man's laborious life — that we are 
reduced if we hold the theory of Poe. A crit'.c 
of his own native land, Mr. Henry James, h?s 
spoken of his "valueless verse," and valueless 



XX THE POETRY OF 

his verse must always appear if we ask from it 
more than it can give. It has nothing to give 
but music, and people who want more must go 
to others that sell a different ware. We shall 
never appreciate Poe if we keep comparing him 
to men of stronger and more human natures. 
We must take him as one of the voices, almost 
the "shadow of a voice," that sound in the 
temple of song, and fill a little hour with music. 
He is not, like Homer, or Scott, or Shakespeare, 
or Moliere, a poet that men can live with always, 
by the sea, in the hills, in the market place. He 
is the singer of rare hours of languor, when the 
soul is vacant of the pride of life, and inclined to 
listen, as it were, to the echo of a lyre from behind 
the hills of death. He is like a Moschus or Bion 
who has crossed the ferry and sings to Pluteus 
a song that faintly reaches the ears of mortals. 

Oi'/c aytpaaroq 
eaaelQ' a juolTrd. 

"Not unrewarded" indeed is the singing, for the 
verse of Poe has been prized by men with a far 
wider range and healthier powers than his own. 

Poe said that with him " poetry was a passion." 
Yet he spoke of his own verses, in a moment of 
real modesty and insight, as trifles "not of much 
value to the public, or very creditable to m)^self." 
They were, for the greater part, composed in the 



EDGAR ALLAN FOE. xxi 

most miserable circumstances, when poverty, 
when neglect, when the cruel indignation of a 
born man of letters, in a country where letters had 
not yet won their place, were torturing the poet. 
He was compelled to be a bookseller's hack. The 
hack's, is indeed " a damnable life," as Goldsmith 
said, and was doubly or trebly damnable when 
"The Bells'* or "Annabel Lee" were sent the 
round of the newspaper offices to be disposed of 
for the price of a dinner and a pair of boots. 
Poe's time was spent in writing elaborate master- 
pieces for a pittance, and in reviewing and crush- 
ing, for the sake of bread, the productions of a 
crowd of mediocrities. Then came violent and 
venomous quarrels, which with enforced hack- 
Avork, devoured the energy of the poet. It is no 
Avonder that he produced little ; but even had he 
enjoyed happier fortunes, his range is so narrow 
that w^e could not have looked for many volumes 
from him. He declared that he could not and 
would not excite his muse, "with an eye to the 
paltry compensations or the more paltry commen- 
dations of mankind." Thus it may, at least, be 
said of him, that he was himself in his poetry, 
though, in writing prose, he often deserted his 
true inspiration. In his earlier verses he is very 
plainly the pupil of Shelley, as any one may see 
who has the courage to read through "Tamer- 
lane" and " Al Aaraaf." His reputation does not 
rest on these poems, which are longer than his 



xxii THE POETR Y OF 

own canon admitted, but on pieces of verbal music 
like "The Haunted Palace," "The Sleeper," "To 
One in Paradise," "Israfel," and the lines "To 
Helen," which I have placed at the beginning of 
this volume. Though this beautiful piece of verse 
did not appear in the very earliest editions of Poe's 
poems, he alwa3'S declared that it was written in 
boyhood for the w^oman whose death caused him, 
in Beddoes' phrase, "with half his heart to inhabit 
other worlds." Poe was well aware that his 
"Raven," despite its immense popularity, was not 
among his best works. Indeed, it is almost too 
clever to be poetical, and has in it a kind of echo 
of ]\Irs. Browning, whose verse, floating in the 
poet's mind, probably suggested the composition. 
"To Helen," ''^The Haunted Palace," and " The 
Sleeper," are perhaps the most coherent and 
powerful as well as the most melodious of Poe s 
verses. As his life sank in poverty, bereave- 
ment, misfortune, and misery, his versemore and 
more approached the vagueness of music, appeal- 
ing often to mere sensation rather than to any 
emotion which can be stated in words. "The 
Bells" was written in the intervals of an unnat- 
ural lethargy; " Ulalume " scarcely pretends to 
remain within the limits of the poetical art, and 
attracts or repels by mere sounds as vacant as 
possible of meaning. Mr. Stedman says, truly 
and eloquently, that "Ulalume" "seems an im- 
provisation, such as a violinist might play upon 



EDGAR ALLAN FOE. xxiii 

the instrument which has become his one thing 
of worth after the death of a companion who had 
left him alone with his own soul." The odd defini- 
tion of the highest poetry as "sense swooning 
into nonsense " seems made for such verse as 
"Ulalume." People are so constituted that, if a 
critic confesses his pleasure in such a thing as 
"Ulalume,"he is supposed to admit his in- 
ability to admire any other poetr3^ Thus it may 
require some moral courage to assert one's belief 
that even " Ulalume" has an excuse for its exist- 
ence. It is curious and worth observing that this 
sort of verse is so rare. It cannot be easy to make, 
or the herd of imitators who approach art by its 
weak points would have produced quantities of 
this enigmatic poetry. Yet, with the exception of 
Poe's later verse, of Mr. Morris's "Blue Closet," 
and perhaps of some pieces by Gerard de Nerval, 
it is difficult to name any successful lines on the 
further side of the border between verse and 
music. In this region, this "ultimate dim Thule," 
Poe seems to reign almost alone. The fact is, 
that the art of hints, of fantasies, of unfinished 
suggestions is not an easy one as many critics, 
both of poetry and painting, seem to suppose. It 
is not enough to be obscure, or to introduce forms 
unexplained and undefined. A certain very rare 
sort of genius is needed to make productions live 
which hold themselves thus independent of nature 
and of the rules of art. We cannot define the na- 



xxiv EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 

ture of the witchery by which the most difficult 
task of romantic art was achieved. Poe did suc- 
ceed, as is confessed by the wide acceptance of 
poems that cannot be defended if any one 
chooses to attack them. They teach nothing, 
they mean Httle; their melody may be triumph- 
antly explained as the result' of a metrical trick. 
But, lie fait ce tour qui vent. The trick was one 
that only Poe could play. Like Hawthorne in 
prose, Poe possessed in poetry a style as strange 
as it was individual, a style trebly remarkable 
because it was the property of a hack-writer. 
J^hen all is said, Poe remains a master of fan- 
tastic and melancholy sound. Some foolish old 
legend tells of a musician who surpassed all his 
rivals. His strains were unearthly sad, and, 
ravished the ears of those who listened with a 
strange melancholy. Yet his viol had but a 
single string, and the framework was fashioned 
out of a dead woman's breast-bone. Poe's verse 
— the parallel is much in his own taste — resembles ' 
that player's minstrelsy. It is morbidly sweet 
and mournful, and all touched on that single 
string, which thrills to a dead and immortal 
affection. 



POEMS. 



TO HELEN. 

Helen, thy beauty is to me 
Like those Nicean barks of yore. 

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea. 
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore 
To his own native shore. 

On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face. 

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
To the glory that was Greece, 

And the grandeur that was Rome. 

Lo ! in yon brilliant window niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand. 
The agate lamp within my hand ! 

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
Are Holy Land ! 



777^ RA VEN. 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, 
weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of for- 
gotten lore, 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there 
came a tapping, 

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my 
chamber door. 

"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my 
chamber door — 

Only this, and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak 

December, 
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost 

upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I had 

sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrows — sorrow for 

the lost Lenore — 
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels 

name Lenore — 

Nameless here for evermore. 



THE RA VEN. 29 

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each pur- 
ple curtain 

Thrilled me— filled me with fantastic terrors never 
felt before ; 

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I 
stood repeating 

"'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my 
chamber door — 

Some late visiter entreating entrance at my cham- 
ber door ;— 

This it is, and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grev:" stronger; hesitating then 

no longer, 
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness 

I implore ; 
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you 

came rapping, 
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my 

chamber door. 
That I scarce was sure I heard you" — here I 

opened wide the door ; 

Darkness there, and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood 

there wondering, fearing. 
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared 

to dream before ; 
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness 

gave no token, 



so THE RAVEN. 

And the only word there spoken was the whispered 

word, " Lenore !" 
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back 

the word, "Lenore !" 

Merely this, and nothing more. 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within 

me burning, 
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder 

than before. 
*' Surely," said I, "surely that is something at 

my window lattice ; 
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this 

mystery explore — 
Let my heart be still a moment and this 

mystery explore ; — 

'Tis the wind and nothing more!" 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many 

a flirt and flutter. 
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintlj- 

days of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he ; not an instant 

stopped or stayed he ; 
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above 

my chamber door — 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my 

chamber door — 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 



THE RAVEN. 3^ 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy 
into smiHng, 

By the grave and stern decorum of thi counten- 
ance it wore, 

' Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," 
I said, "art sure no craven, 

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from 
the Nightly shore — 

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's 
Plutonian shore !" 

Quoth the raven, " Nevermore." 

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear dis- 
course so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning — little relevarcy 
bore; 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human 
being 

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his 
chamber door — 

B'rd or beast upon the sculptured bust above his 
chamber door. 

With such name as " Nevermore." 

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, 

spoke only 
That one w^ord, as if his soul in that one word he 

did outpour. 
Nothing further then he uttered— not a feather 

then he fluttered — 



32 THE RA VEN. 

Till I scarcely more than muttered " Other friends 

have flown before — 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes 

have flown before." 

Then the bird said " Nevermore." 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly 
spoken, 

*' Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only 
stock and store, 

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmer- 
ciful Disaster 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs 
one burden bore — 

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden 
bore 

Of ' Never — nevermore,' " 

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul 

into smiling. 
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of 

bird and bust and door; 
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself 

to linking 
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous 

bird of yore — 
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and 

ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking " Nevermore." 



THE RA VEN. 33 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no sylable ex- 
pressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my 
bosom's core; 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease 
reclining 

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light 
gloated o'er. 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light 
gloating o'er, 

S/w shall press, ah, nevermore ! 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed 

from an unseen censer 
Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on 

the tufted floor. 
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee — by 

these angels he hath sent thee 
Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories 

of Lenore ! 
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this 

lost Lenore !" 

Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." 

"Prophet" said I, "thing of evil !— prophet still, 

if bird or devil ! — 
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed 

thee here ashore. 
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land 

enchanted — 



34 THE RA VEN. 

On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, 

I implore — 
Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell me — tell 

me, I implore !" 

Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." 

" Prophet !" said I, " thing of evil — prophet still, 

if bird or devil ! 
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God 

we both adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the 

distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels 

name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels 

name Lenore ?" 

Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." 

" Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend ! " 

I shrieked, upstarting — 
" Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's 

Plutonian shore ! 
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy 

soul hath spoken ! 
Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust 

above my door ! 
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy 

form from off my door ! " 

Quoth the raven, " Nevermore." 



THE RA VEN. 35 

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still 
is sitting 

On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my cham- 
ber door ; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's 
that is dreaming. 

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws 
his shadow on the floor ; 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies float- 
ing on the floor 

Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 



THE VALLEY OF UNREST, 

Ojice it smiled a silent dell 

Where the people did not dwell ; 

They had gone unto the wars, 

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, 

Nightly, from their azure towers, 

To keep watch above the flowers, 

In the midst of which all day 

The red sun-light lazily lay. 

Now each visitor shall confess 

The sad valley's restlessness. 

Nothing there is motionless — 

Nothing save the airs that brood 

Over the magic solitude. 

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees 

That palpitate like the chill seas 

Around the misty Hebrides ! 

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven 

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven 

Uneasily, from morn till even, 

Over the violets there that lie 

In myriad types of the human eye — 



thb: valley of unrest. 37 

Over the lilies there that wave 
And weep above a nameless grave ! 
They wave : — from out their fragrant tops 
Eternal dews come down in drops. 
They weep : — from off their delicate stems 
Perennial tears descend in gems. 



BRIDAL BALLAD. 

The ring is on my hand, 

And the wreath is on my brow- 
Satins and jewels grand 
Are all at my command, 

And I am happy now. 



And my lord he loves me well ; 

But, when first he breathed his* vow, 
I felt my bosom swell — 
For the words rang as a knell, 
And the voice seemed his who fell 
In the battle down the dell. 

And who is happy now. 



But he spoke to reassure me, 

And he kissed my pallid brow, 
While a reverie came o'er me. 
And to the churchyard bore me, 
And I sighed to him before me, 
Thinking him dead D'Elormie, 
' ' Oh, I am happy now ! " 



BRIDAL BALLAD. 39 

And thus the words were spoken, 

And this the plighted vow, 
And, though my faith be broken. 
And, though my heart be broken, 
Behold the golden token 

That proves me happy now ! 

Would God I could awaken ! 

For I dream I know not how, 
And my soul is sorely shaken 
Lest an evil step be taken, — 
Lest the dead who is forsaken 

May not be happy now. 



THE SLEEPER. 

At midnight, in the month of June, 
I stand beneath the mystic moon. 
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, 
Exhales from out her golden rim. 
And, softly dripping, drop by drop, 
Upon the quiet mountain top, 
Steals drowsily and musically 
Into the universal valley. 
The rosemary nods upon the grave ; 
The lily lolls upon the wave ; 
Wrapping the fog about its breast, 
The ruin moulders into rest ; 
Looking like Lethe, see ! the lake 
A conscious slumber seems to take. 
And would not, for the world, awake. 
All Beauty sleeps! — and lo! where lies 
(Her casement open to the skies) 
Irene, with her Destinies ! 



Oh, lady bright ! can it be right— 
This window open to the night ? 
The wanton airs, from the tree-top. 
Laughingly through the lattice drop — 



THE SLEEPER. 41 

The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, 

Flit through thy chamber in and out, 

And wave the curtain canopy 

So fitfully — so fearfully — 

Above the closed and fringed lid 

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid. 

That, o'er the floor and down the wall. 

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall ! 

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? 

Why and what art thou dreaming here ? 

Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas, 

A wonder to these garden trees ! 

Strange is thy pallor ! strange thy dress! 

Strange, above all, thy length of tress, 

And this all-solemn silentness ! 

The lady sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep, 

Which is enduring, so be deep ! 

Heaven have her in its sacred keep ! 

This chamber changed for one more holy. 

This bed for one more melanchol3^ 

I pray to God that she may lie 

Forever with unopened eye. 

While the dim sheeted ghosts go by ! 



My love, she sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep. 

As it is lasting, so be deep ! 

Soft may the worms about her creep ! 

Far in the forest, dim and old. 

For her may some tall vault unfold — 



42 THE SLEEPER. 

Some vault that oft hath flung its black 
And winged panels fluttering back, 
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls. 
Of her grand family funerals — 
Some sepulchre, remote, alone. 
Against whose portal she hath thrown 
In childhood many an idle stone — 
Some tomb from out whose sounding door 
She ne'er shall force an echo more, 
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin ! 
It was the dead who groaned within. 



THE COLISEUM. 

Type of the antique Rome ! Rich reliquary 
Of lofty contemplation left to Time 
By buried centuries of pomp and power ! 
At length — at length — after so many days 
Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst 
(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie), 
I kneel, an altered and an humble man, 
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within 
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom and glory ' 



Vastness ! and Age ! and Memories of Eld! 
Silence ! and Desolation ! and dim Night ! 
I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength — 
O spells more sure than e'er Judsean king 
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane ! 
O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee 
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars ! 



Here, where a hero fell, a column falls ! 
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, 
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat ! 



44 THE COLISEUM. 

Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded 

hair 
Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and 

thistle ! 
Here, where on golden throne the monarch 

lolled, 
Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home. 
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, 
The swift and silent lizard of the stones ! 



But stay ! these walls — these ivy-clad arcades — 

These mouldering plinths — these sad and black- 
ened shafts — 

These vague entablatures — this crumbling 
frieze — 

These shattered cornices — this wreck — this 
ruin — 

These stones — alas ! these grey stones— are they 
all— 

All of the famed, and the colossal left 

By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? 



'* Not all " — the Echoes answer me — " not all ! 
Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever 
From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, 
As melody from Memnon to the Sun. 
We rule the hearts of mightiest men — we rule 
With a despotic sway all giant minds. 



THE COLISEUM, 45 

We are not impotent — we pallid stones. 
Not all our power is gone — not all our fame — 
Not all the magic of our high renown — 
Not all the wonder that encircles us — 
Not all the mysteries that in us lie — 
Not all the memories that hang upon 
And cling around about us as a garment, 
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." 



LENORE. 

Ah, broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit flown 

for ever ! 
Let the bell toll !— a saintly soul floats on the 

Stygian river ; 
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear? — weep 

now or never more ! 
See ! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy 

love, Lenore ! 
Come ! let the burial rite be read — the funeral 

song be sung ! — 
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever 

died so young — 
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she 

died so young. 



"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and 

hated her for her pride, 
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed 

her — that she died ! 



LENORE. 47 

How shall the ritual, then, be read?— the 

requiem how be sung 
By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by yours the 

slanderous tongue 
That did to death the innocent that died, and 

died so young?" 



Peccaviinus; but rave not thus! and let a 

Sabbath song 
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may 

feel no wrong ! 
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with 

Hope that flew beside. 
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should 

have been thy bride— 
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so 

lowly lies. 
The life upon her yellow hair, but not within 

her eyes — 
The life still there, upon her hair — the death 

upon her eyes. 



"Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No 

dirge will I upraise, 
• ' But waft the angel on her flight with a Pa^an 

of old days ' 



48 LENORE. 

"Let no bell toll! — lest her sweet soul, amid 

its hallowed mirth, 
"Should catch the note, as it doth float — up 

from the damned Earth. 
"To friends above, from fiends below, the 

indignant ghost is riven — 
"From Hell unto a high estate far up within 

the Heaven — 
"From grief and groan, to a golden throne, 

beside the King of Heaven." 



CATHOLIC HYMN. 

At morn — at noon — at twilight dim — 
Maria ! thou hast heard my hymn ! 
In joy and wo — in good and ill — 
Mother of God, be with me still ! 
When the Hours flew brightly by, 
And not a cloud obscured the sky. 
My soul, lest it should truant be. 
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; 
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast 
Darkly my Present and my Past, 
Let my Future radiant shine 
With sweet hopes of thee and thine ! 



ISRAFEL* 

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 

"Whose heart-strings are a lute ; " 

None sing so wildly well 

As the angel Israfel, 

And the giddy stars (so legends tell), 

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
Of his voice, all mute. 

Tottering above 

In her highest noon, 

The enamored moon 
Blushes with love, 

While, to listen, the red levin 

(With the rapid Pleiads, even. 

Which were seven), 

Pauses in heaven. 

And they say (the starry choir 

And the other listening things) 
That Israfeli's fire 
Is owing to that lyre 

*And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, 
and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.— 
Koran, 



ISRAFEL. 51 

By which he sits and sings — 
The trembling living wire, 
Of those unusual strings. 

But the skies that angel trod, 

Where deep thoughts are a duty — 

Where Love's a grown-up God — 

Where the Houri glances are 
Imbued with all the beauty 

Which we worship in a star. 

Therefore, thou art not wrong, 

Israfeli, who despisest 
An unimpassioned song; 
To thee the laurels belong, 

Best bard, because the wisest ! 
Merrily live and long ! 

The ecstasies above 

With thy burning measures suit — 
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love. 

With the fervor of thy lute — 

Well may the stars be mute ! 

Yes, Heaven is thine ; but this 
Is a world of sweets and sours ; 
Our flowers are merely — flowers, 

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 
Is the sunshine of ours. 



52 ISRAFEL. 

If I could dwell 
Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
He might not sing so wildly well 

A mortal melody, 
While a bolder note than this might swell 

From my lyre within the sky. 



DREAMLAND. 

By a route obscure and lonely, 
Haunted by ill angels only, 

Where an Eidolon, named Night, 

On a black throne reigns upright, 
I have reached these lands but newly 
From an ultimate dim Thule — 

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, 

Out of Space — out of Time. 



Bottomless vales and boundless floods, 
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, 
With forms that no man can discover 
For the dews that drip all over ; 
Mountains toppling evermore 
Into sea^ without a shore ; 
Seas that restlessly aspire, 
Surging, unto skies of fire; 
Lakes that endlessly outspread 
Their lone waters — lone and dead, — 
Their still waters — still and chilly 
With the snows of the lolling lily. 



54 DREAMLAND. 

By the lakes that thus outspread 
Their lone waters, lone and dead, — 
Their sad waters, sad and chilly 
With the snows of the lolling lily, — 
By the mountains — near the river 
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, — 
By the grey woods, — by the swamp 
Where the toad and the newt encamp, - 
By the dismal tarns and pools 
Where dwell the Ghouls, — 

By each spot the most unholy — 
In each nook most melancholy, — 
There the traveller meets aghast 
Sheeted Memories of the Past — 
Shrouded forms that start and sigh 
As they pass the wanderer by — 
White-robed forms of friends long given, 
In agony, to the Earth — and Heaven. 



For the heart whose woes are legion 
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region — 

For the spirit that walks in shadow 

'Tis— oh, 'tis an Eldorado! 
But the traveller, travelling through it, 
May not — dare not openly view it ; 

Never its mysteries are exposed 

To the weak human ej-e unclosed ; 
So wills its king, who hath forbid 
The uplifting of the fringed lid ; 



DREAMLAND, 55 

And thus the sad Soul that here passes 
Beholds it but through darkened glasses. 

By a route obscure and lonely, 

Haunted by ill angels only, 

Where an Eidolon, named Night, 
On a black throne reigns upright, 

I have wandered home but newly 

From this ultimate dim Thule. 



SONNET: TO ZANTE. 

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, 

Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take [ 
How many memories of what radiant hours 

At sight of thee and thine at once awake ! 
How many scenes of what departed bliss ! 

How many thoughts of what entombed hopes! 
How many visions of a maiden that is 

No more — no more upon thy verdant slopes ! 
No mo7'€ ! alas, that magical sad sound 

Transforming all! Thy charm shall please 
110 7no7'e — 
Thy memory no more ! Accursed ground ! 

Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, 
O hyacinthine isle ! O purple Zante ! 

' ' I sola d'oro ! Fior di Levante ! " 



THE CITY IN THE SEA. 

Lo 1 Death has reared himself a throne 
In a strange city lying alone 

Far down within the dim West, 

Where the good and the bad and the worst 
and the best, 

Have gone to their eternal rest. 
Their shrines and palaces and towers 

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not ! ) 
Resemble nothing that is ours. 

Around, by lifting winds forgot, 
Resignedly beneath the sky 
The melancholy waters lie. 

No rays from the holy heaven come down 
On the long night-time of that town ; 

But light from out the lurid sea 
Streams up the turrets silently — 

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free — 
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — 
Up fanes— up Babylon-like walls — 

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers — 



58 THE CITY IN THE SEA. 

Up many and many a marvellous shrine 
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
The viol, the violet, and the vine. 

Resignedly beneath the sky 

The melancholy waters lie. 

So blend the turrets and shadows there 
That all seem pendulous in air. 

While from a proud tower in the town 

Death looks gigantically down. 

There open fanes and gaping graves 
Yawn level with the luminous waves ; 
But not the riches there that lie 
In each idol's diamond eye — 
Not the gaily-jewelled dead 
Tempt the waters from their bed ; 
For no ripples curl, alas ! 
Along that wilderness of glass — 
No swellings tell that winds may be 
Upon some far-off happier sea — 

No heavings hint that winds have been 
On seas less hideously serene. 

But lo, a stir is in the air ! 

The wave — there is a movement there ! 
As if the towers had thrust aside, 
In slightly sinking, the dull tide — 



THE CITY IN THE SEA. 59 

As if their tops had feebly given 
A void within the filmy Heaven. 

The waves have now a redder glow — 

The hours are breathing faint and low— 
And when, amid no earthly moans, 

Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 

Shall do it reverence. 



TO ONE IN PARADISE. 

Thou wast all that to me, love. 

For which my soul did pine— 
A green isle in the sea, love, 

A fountain and a shrine, 
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 

And all the flowers were mine. 

Ah, dream too bright to last ! 

Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
But to be overcast ! 

A voice from out the Future cries. 
On ! on ! " — but o'er the Past 

(Dim gulf !) my spirit hovering lies 
Mute, motionless, aghast! 

For, alas ! alas ! with me 

The light of Life is o'er ! 

No more — no more — no more — 
(Such language holds the solemn sea 

To the sands upon the shore) 
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 

Or the stricken eagle soar ! 



TO ONE IN PARADISE. 6 1 

And all my days are trances, 

And all my nightly dreams 
Are where thy dark eye glances, 

And where thy footstep gleams — 
In what ethereal dances, 

By what eternal streams. 



EULALIE. 

I DWELT alone 
In a world of moan, 
And my soul was a stagnant tide, 
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blush- 
ing bride — 
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my 
smiling bride. 

Ah, less— less bright 
The stars of the night 
Than the eyes of the radiant girl ! 
And never a flake 
That the vapor can make 
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, 
Can vie with the modest Eulalie' s most unre- 
garded curl — 
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie' s most 
humble and careless curl. 

Now Doubt — now Pain 
Come never again. 
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh. 



EULALIE. 63 

And all day long 
Shines, bright and strong, 
Astarte within the sky, 
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her 

matron eye — 
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her 
violet eye. 



TO F 5 5. O D. 

Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart 

From its present pathway part not ! 
Being everything which now thou art, 

Be nothing which thou art not. 
So with the world thy gentle ways, 

Thy grace, thy more than beauty. 
Shall be an endless theme of praise, 

And love — a simple duty. 



TO F . 

Beloved ! amid the earnest woes 

That crowd around my earthly path — 

(Drear path, alas ! where grows 

Not even one lonely rose) — 
My soul at least a solace hath 

In dreams of thee, and therein knows 

An Eden of bland repose. 

And thus thy memory is to me 
Like some enchanted far-off isle 

In some tumultuous sea — 

Some ocean throbbing far and free 
With storms— but where meanwhile 

Serenest skies continually 

Just o'er that one bright island smile. 



SONNET: SILENCE. 

There are some qualities — some incorporate 
things, 

That have a double life, which thus is made 
A type of that twin entity which springs 

From matter and light, evinced in solid and 
shade. 
There is a twofold Silence — sea and shore — 

Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places, 

Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn 
graces, 
Some human memories and tearful lore, 
Render him terrorless: his name's " No More." 
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not! 

No power hath he of evil in himself ; 
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot !) 

Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf. 
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod 
No foot of man), commend thyself to God ! 



THE CONQUEROR WORM. 

Lo! 'tis a gala night 

Within the lonesome latter years ! 
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 

In veils, and drowned in tears, 
Sit in a theatre, to see 

A play of hopes and fears, 
While the orchestra breathes fitfully 

The music of the spheres. 

Mimes, in the form of God on high, 

Mutter and mumble low. 
And hither and thither fly — 

Mere puppets they, who come and go 
At bidding of vast formless things 

That shift the scenery to and fro. 
Flapping from out their Condor wings 

Invisible Wo ! 

That motley drama- oh, be sure 

It shall not be forgot ! 
With its Phantom chased for evermore 

By a crowd that seize it not, 



6S THE CONQUEROR WORM. 

Through a circle that ever returneth in 

To the self-same spot, 
And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 

And Horror the soul of the plot. 

But see, amid the mimic rout 

A crawling shape intrude ! 
A blood-red thing that writhes from out 

The scenic solitude ! 
It writhes ! — it writhes ! — with mortal pangs 

The mimes become its food, 
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs 

In human gore imbued. 

Out — out are the lights — out all ! 

And, over each quivering form, 
The curtain, a funeral pall. 

Comes down with the rush of a storm 
And the angels, all palhd and wan. 

Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
That the play is the tragedy " Man," 

And its hero the Conqueror Worm. 



THE HAUNTED PALACE. 

In the greenest of our valleys 

By good angels tenanted, 
Once a fair and stately palace — 

Radiant palace — reared its head. 
In the monarch Thought's dominion — 

It stood there ! 
Never seraph spread a pinion 

Over fabric half so fair ! 

Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 

On its roof did float and flow, 
(This — all this — was in the olden 

Time long ago) ; 
And every gentle air that dallied. 

In that sweet day, 
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 

A winged odour went away. 

Wanderers happy that in valley, 

Through two luminous windows, saw 
Spirits moving musically, 

To a lute's well-tuned law, 
Round about a throne where, sitting 

(Porphyrogene !) 
In state his glory well befitting, 

The ruler of the realm was seen. 



70 THE HA UNTED PAEACE. 

And all with pearl and ruby glowing 

Was the fair palace door, 
Through which came flowing, flowing, 
flowing, • 

And sparkling evermore, 
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 

Was but to sing, 
In voices of surpassing beauty. 

The wit and wisdom of their king. 

But evil things, in robes of sorrow. 

Assailed toe monarch's high estate. 
(Ah, let us mourn ! — for never morrow* 

Shall dawn upon him desolate I) 
And round about his home the glory 

That blushed and bloom.ed, 
Is but a dim-remembered stoiy 

Of the old time entombed. 

And travellers, now, within that valley, 

Through the red-litten windows see 
Vast forms, that move fantastically 

To a discordant melody, 
While, I'ke a ghastly rapid river. 

Through the pale door 
A hideous throng rush out forever, 

And laugh — but smile no more. 

* V. 1. sorroiv, an obvious misprint. 



SCENES FROM " POLITIAN. 



SCENES FROM ^^POLITIANr' 
AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA. 



I. 

ROME. — A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra aftd 
Castiglione. 

Alessandra. Thou art sad. Castiglione. 

Castiglione. Sad! — not I. 
Oh, I'm the happiest, happiest man in Rome '. 
A few days more, thon knowest, my Alessandra. 
Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy! 

Aless. Methinks thou hast a singular way of 
showing 
Thy happiness! — what ails thee, cousin of mine? 
Why didst thou sigh so deeply? 

Cas. Did I sigh? 
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion, 
A silly — a most silly fashion I have 
When I am very happy. Did I sigh? {Sighing.) 



74 SCENES FROM 'TOLITIANr 

Aless. Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou 
hast indulged 
Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it. 
Late hours and wine, Castiglione, — these 
Will ruin thee! — thou art already altered — 
Thy looks are haggard — nothing so wears away 
The constitution as late hours and wine. 

Cas. (iinising.) Nothing, fair cousin, nothing 
— not even deep sorrow — 
Wears it away like evil hours and wine. 
I will amend. 

Aless. Do it. I would have thee drop 
Thy riotous company, too — fellows low born 
111 suit the like with old Di Broglio's heir 
And Alessandra's husband. 

Cas. 1 will drop them. 

Ai.Ess. Thou wilt — thou must. Attend thou 
also more 
To thy dress and equipage — they are over plain 
For thy lofty rank and fashion — much depends 
Upon appearances. 

Cas. I'll see to it. 

Aless. Then see to it! — pay more attention, 
sir. 
To a becoming carriage — much thou wantest 
In dignity. 

Cas, Much, much, oh, much I want 
In proper dignity. 

Aless. {hatightily.) Thou mockest me. Sir! 

Cas. {abstractedly.) Sweet, gentle Lalage! 



SCI^XES FROM ''POLITIANr 75 

Aless. Heard I aright? 
I speak to him — he speaks of Lalage ! 
Sir Count! {places Jicr //and on his shoidder) 

what art thou dreaming? He's not well! 
What ails thee, sir? 

Cas. {starling. ) Cousin ! fair coasin ! — madam ! 
I crave thy pardon — indeed I am not well 
Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please. 
This air is most oppressive ! — Madam — the Duke ' 

Enter Di Broglio. 

Di Broglio. My son, I've news for thee! — hey? 
—what's the matter! {observin.g Ales- 
sand ra.) 
r the pouts! Kiss her, Castiglione ! kiss her, 
You dog ! and make it up, I say, this minute ! 
I've news for you both. Politian is expected 
Hourly in Rome — Politian, Earl of Leicester! 
We'll have him at the wedding. 'Tis his first visit 
To the imperial city. 

Aless. What! PoUtian 
Of Britain, Earl of Leicester? 

Di Brog. The same, my love. 
We'll have him at the wedding. A man quite young 
In years, but grey in fame. I have not seen him. 
But rumor speaks of him as of a prodigy 
Pre-eminent in arts, and arms, and wealth, 
And high descent. We'll have him at the wedding. 

Aless. I have heard much of this Politian. 



76 SCENES FROM ''PO LIT I AN." 

Gay, volatile and giddy — is he not? 
And little given to thinking. 

Di Brog. Far from it, love. 
No branch, they say, of all philosophy 
So deep abstruse he has not mastered it. 
Learned as few are learned. 

Aless. 'Tis very strange ! 
I have known men have seen Politian 
And sought his company. They speak of him 
As of one who entered madly into life, 
Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs. 

Cas. Ridiculous ! Now / have seen Politian 
And know him well — nor learned nor mirthful he. 
He is a dreamer, and a man shut out 
From common passions. 

Di Brog. Children, we disagree. 
Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air 
Of the garden. Did I dream, or did I hear 
Politian was a melaticholy man? {Exeunt.) 



II. 

ROME. — A Lady s apartment, with a window 
opeji and looking into a garden. Lalage, 
in deep inour fling, reading at a table on 
ivhich lie some books and a /iand-?nirror. 
In the background Jacinta {aservafit maid) 
leans carelessly upon a chair. 
Lal. Jacmta! is it thou? 



SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 77 

J AC. {Pertly). Yes, ma'am, I'm here. 
Lal. I did not know, Jacinta. you were in wait- 
ing. 
Sit down ! — let not my presence trouble you — 
Sit down ! — for I am humble, most humble. 
Jac. {aside). 'Tis time. 

(Jacinta seats herself 171 a sidelong man- 
ner upon the chair, resti?ig her elbows 
ttpoft the back, and regarding her mis- 
tress with a contemptuous look. Lalage 
continues to read.) 
Lal. " It in another climate, so he said, 
"Bore a bright golden flower, but not i' this soil ! " 
{Pauses, turns over some leaves, and restimes.) 
"No lingering winters there, nor snow, nor 

shower — 
" But Ocean ever to refresh mankind 
" Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind." 
Oh, beautiful ! — most beautiful ! — how like . 
To what my fevered soul doth dream of Heaven ! 
O happy land! {Pauses.) She died! — the maiden 

died! 
O still more happy maiden who couldst die ! 
Jacinta ! 

(Jacinta returns jw answer, and Lalage 
presently resumes.) 
Again! — a simiar tale 
Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea ! 
Thus speaketh one Ferdinand in the words of the 
play— 



78 SCENES FROM ''POLITIAN." 

' ' She died full young " — one Bossola answers him— 

" I think not so — her infelicity 

"Seemed to have years too many" — Ah, luckless 

lady — 
Jacinta ! {Still no answer.) 

Here's a far sterner story — 
But like — oh, very like in its despair — 
Of that Egyptian queen, winning so easily 
A thousand hearts — losing at length her own. 
She died. Thus endeth the history — andhermaids 
Lean o .-er her and weep — two gentle maids 
With gentle names — Eiros and Charmion ! 
Rainbow and Dove ! — Jacinta ! 

J AC. {pettishly). Madam, what is it? 

Lal. Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind 
As go down in the library and bring me 
The Holy Evangelists? 

J AC. Pshaw! {Exit.) 

Lal. If there be balm 
For the wounded spirit in Gilead it is there ! 
Dew in the night time of my bitter trouble 
Will there be found — " dew sweeter far than that 
Which hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill." 
{Re-enter Jacinta and throws a volinne 
on the table. ) 

Jac. There, ma'am, 's the book. Indeed she is 
very troublesome. {Aside.) 

Lal. {astonished). What didst thou say, Ja- 
cinta? Have I done aught 
To grieve thee or to vex thee? — I am sorry. 



SCENES FROM ''POLJTIANr 79 

For thou hast served me long and ever been 
Trustworthy and respectful. 

{Resumes her reading.') 
Jac. I can't believe 
She has any more jewels — no — no — sliegavemeall. 

{Aside.) 
Lal. What didst thou say, Jacinta? Now I be- 
think me, 
Thou hast not spoken lately of thy wedding. 
How fares good Ugo? — and when is it to be? 
Can I do aught? — is there no further aid 
Thou needest, Jacinta? 

Jac. Is there no further aid ! 
That's meant for me. {Aside.) I'm sure, madam, 

you need not 
Be always throwing those jewels in my teeth. 

Lal. Jewels! Jacinta, — now indeed, Jacinta, 
I thought not of the jewels. 

Jac. Oh ! perhaps not ! 
But then I might have sworn it. After all. 
There's Ugo says the ring is only paste. 
For he's sure the Count Castiglione never 
Would have given a real diamond to such as 

you; 
And at the best I'm certain, madam, you cannot 
Have use for jewels Jiozv. But I might have 
sworn it. {Exit.) 

(Lalage bursts into tears, and leans her 
head upon the table — after a short 
pause raises it.) 



8o SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 

Lal. Poor Lalage ! — and is it come to this? 
Thy servant maid! — but courage! — 'tis but a 

viper 
Whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the 
soul ! ( Taking up the inirro7\ ) 

Ha! here at least's a friend — too much a friend 
In earlier days — a friend will not deceive thee. 
Fair mirror and true! now tell me (for thou canst) 
A tale — a pretty tale — and heed thou not 
Though it be rife wnth wo. It answers me. 
It speaks of sunken eyes, and waisted cheeks, 
And Beauty long deceased — remembers me 
Of joy departed — Hope, the Seraph Hope, 
Inurned and entombed ! — now, in a tone 
Low, sad, and solemn, but most audible. 
Whispers of early grave untimely yawning 
For ruined maid. Fair mirror and true! — thou 

liest not! 
Thou nast no end to gain — no heart to break — 
Castiglione lied who said he loved — 
Thou true — he false ! — false !--false ! 

( While she speaks a Dwnk enters her 

apart ?nent and approaches iiiiobserved.) 
Monk. Refuge thou hast, 
Sweet daughter! in Heaven. Think of eternal 

things ! 
Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray ! 

Lal. {arising hurriedly). I cannot pray ! — My 

soul is at war with God ! 
The frightful sounds of merriment below 



SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 8i 

Disturb my senses — go ! I cannot pray — 
The sweet airs from the garden worry me ! 
Thy presence grieves me — go ! — thy priestly rai- 
ment 
Fills me with dread — thy ebony crucifix 
With horror and awe ! 

Monk. Think of thy precious soul ! 

Lal. Think of my early days? — think (jf my 
father 
And mother in Heaven ! think of our quiet home, 
And the rivulet that ran before the door ! 
Think of my little sisters ! — think of them i 
And think of me! — think of my trusting love 
And confidence — his vows — my ruin — think — think 

Of my unspeakable misery ! begone ! 

Yet stay ! 3^et stay ! — what was it thou saidst of 

prayer 
And penitence? Didst thoti not speak of faith 
And vows before the throne? 

Monk. I did. 

Lal. 'Tis well. 
There is a vow were fitting should be made — 
A sacred vow, imperative, and urgent, 
A solemn vow ! 

Monk. Daughter, this zeal is well ! 

Lal. Father, this zeal is anything but w^ell ! 
Hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing ? 
A crucifix whereon to register 
This sacred vow? {He hands her his owtt.) 

Not that ! — Oh ! no ! — no ! — no ! {Shudderi?ig ) 



82 SCENES EROM ''POLITIANr 

Not that! Not that!— I tell thee, holy man. 
Thy raiments and thy ebony cross affright me ! 
Stand back! I have a crucifix myself, — 
/ have a crucifix! Methinks 'twere fitting 
The deed — the vow — the symbol of the deed — 
And the deed's register should tally, father! 

{Draws a cross-handled dagger and ra/ses 
it on high.) 
Behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine 
Is written in heaven ! 

Monk. Thy words are madness, daughter, 
And speak a purpose unholy — thy lips are livid — 
Thine eyes are wild — tempt not the wrath divine! 
Pause ere too late ! — oh, be not — be not rash ! 
Swear not the oath — oh, swear it not ! 

Lal. 'Tis sworn! 



III. 



An apartment in a palace. Politian and Bal 

DAZZAR. 

Baldazzar, Arouse thee now, Politian ! 
Thou must not — nay indeed, indeed, thou shalt not 
Give way unto these humors. Be thyself ! 
Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee. 
And live, for now thou diest ! 

Politian. Not so, Baldazzar ! 
Surely I live. 



SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr '^2, 

Bal. Politian, it doth grieve me 
To see thee thus. 

Pol. Baldazzar, it doth grieve me 
To give thee cause for grief, my honored friend. 
Command me, sir! what wouldst thou have me 

do? 
At thy behest I will shake off that nature 
Which from my forefathers I did inherit, 
Which with my mother's milk I did imbibe, 
And be no more Politian, but some other. 
Command me, sir ! 

Bal. To the field then— to the field- 
To the senate or the field. 

Pol. Alas! alas! 
There is an imp would follow me even there I 
There is an imp hath followed me even there ! 
There is what voice was that? 

Bal. I heard it not. 
I heard not any voice except thine own, 
And the echo of thine own. 

Pol. Then I but dreamed. 

Bal. Give not thy soul to dreams: the camp 
— the court 
Befit thee — Fame awaits thee — Glory calls — 
And her the trumpet-tongued thou wilt not hear 
In hearkening to imaginary sounds 
And phantom voices. 

Pol It is a phantom voice ! 
Didst thou not hear it then ? 

Bal. I heard it not. 



84 SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 

Pol. Thou heardst it not! Baldazzar, speak 

no more 
To me, Politian, of thy camps and courts. 
Oh ! I am sick, sick, sick, even unto death. 
Of the hollow and high-sounding vanities 
Of the populous Earth ! Bear with me yet awhile ! 
We have been boys together — school fellows — 
And now are friends — yet shall not be so long — 
For in the eternal city thou shalt dome 
A kind and gentle office, and a Power — 
A Power august, benignant, and supreme — 
Shall then absolve thee of all further duties 
Unto thy friend. 

Bal. Thou speakest a fearful riddle 
I will not understand. 

Pol. Yet now as Fate 
Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low, 
The sands of time are changed to golden grains. 
And dazzle me, Baldazzar. Alas! alas' 
I cannot die, having within my heart 
So keen a relish for the beautiful 
As hath been kindled within it. Methinks the air 
Is balmer now than it was wont to be — 
Rich melodies are floating in the winds — 
A rarer loveliness bedecks the earth — 
And with a holier lustre the quiet moon 
Sitteth in Heaven. — Hist! hist! thou canst not say 
Thou hearest not now, Baldazzar ? 

Bal. Indeed I hear not. 



SCENES FROM '^POLITIANr 85 

Pol. Not hear it! — listen now — listen! — the 
faintest sound 
And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard ! 
A lady's voice ! — and sorrow in the tone ! 
Baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell ! 
Again ! — again ! — how solemnly it falls 
Into my heart of hearts ! that eloquent voice 
Surely I never heard — yet it were well 
Had I /;/// heard it with its thrilling tones 
In ^earlier days! 

Bal. I myself hear it now. 
Be still! — the voice, if I mistake not greatly, 
Proceeds from yonder lattice — which you may see 
Very plainly through the window — it belongs. 
Does it not? unto this palace of the Duke. 
The singer is undoubtedly beneath 
The roof of his Excellency — and perhaps 
Is even that Alessandra of whom he spoke 
As the betrothed of Castiglione, 
His son and heir. 
Pol. Be still ! — it comes again ! 
Voice {very faintly). 

"And is thy heart so strong 
As for to leave me thus, 
Who have loved thee so long 
In wealth and wo among? 
And is thy heart so strong 
As for to leave me thus ? 

Say nay — say nay ! " 



86 SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 

Bal. The song is English, and I oft have heard 
it 
In merry England — never so plaintively — 
Hist ! hist ! it comes again ! 

Voicp: {more loudly). "Is it so strong 
As for to leave me thus, 
Wh have loved thee so long 
In wealth and wo among ? 
And is thy heart so strong 
As for to leave me thus ? 

Say nay — say nay ! " 
Bal. 'Tis hushed and all is still ! 
Pol. All is not still. 
Bal. Let us go down. 
Pol. Go down, Baldazzar, go! 
Bal. The hour is growing late — the Duke 
awaits us, — 
Thy presence is expected in the hall 
Below. What ails thee, Earl Politian? 
Voice {(Ustmctly). 

" Who have loved thee so long. 
In wealth and wo among ! 
And is thy heart so strong ? 

Say nay — say nay ! " 
Bal. Let us descend! — 'tis time. Politian, give 
These fancies to the wind. Remember, pray. 
Your bearing lately savored much of rudeness 
L'nto the Duke. Arouse thee! and remember! 
Pol. Remember ? I do. Lead on ! I do re- 
member. {Goi)ig.) 



SCENES FROM ^^POLITIANr 87 

Let lis descend. Believe me I would give, 
Freely would give the broad lands of my earldom 
To look upon the face hidden by yon lattice — 
"To gaze upon that veiled face, and hear 
Once more that silent tongue." 

Bal. Let me beg you, sir, 
Descend with me — the Duke may be offended. 
Let us go down, I pray you. 

Voice {loudly). Say nay ! say nay ! 

Pol. {aside). 'Tis strange! — 'tis very strange 
— methought the voice 
Chimed in with mv desires and bade me stay! 

{Approaching the window ) 
Sweet voice ! I heed thee, and will surely stay. 
Now be this Fancy, by Heaven, or be it Fate, 
Still will I not descend. Baldazzar, make 
Apology unto the Duke for me; 
I go not down to-night. 

Bal. Your lordship's pleasure 
Shall be attended to. Good-night, Politian. 

Pol. Good-night, my friend, good-night. 



IV. 

TJie gardens of a palace — moonlight. Lalage 
and Politian. 

Lalage. And dost thou speak of love 
To ?ne, Politian? — dost thou speak of love 



SS SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 

To Lalage? — ah, wo — ah, wo is nie! 

This mockery is mo.^t cruel — most cruel indeed ! 

PoLiTiAN. Weep not! oh, sob not thus! — thy 
bitter tears 
Will madden me. Oh, mourn not, Lalage — 
Be comforted ! I know — I know it all, 
And still I speak of love. Look at me, brightest 
And beautiful Lalage! — turn here thine eyes! 
Thou askest me if I could speak of love, 
Knowing what I know, and seeing what I have 

seen. 
Thou askest me that — and thus I answer thee — 
Thus on my bended knee I answer thee. 

{Knccliiii^' ) 
Sweet Lalage, I hn>e thee — love thee — hwe thee; 
Thro' good and ill — thro' weal and wo / love thee. 
Not mother, with her first-born on her knee, 
Thrills with intenser love than I for thee. 
Not on God's altar, in any time or clime, 
Burned there a holier fire than burneth now 
Within my spirit for thee. And do I love? 

{Arisnig.') 
Even for thy woes I love — even for thy woes — 
Thy beauty and thy woes. 

Lal. Alas ! proud Earl, 
Thou dost forget thyself, remembering me ! 
How, in th}^ father's halls, among the maidens 
Pure and reproachless of thy princely line, 
Could the dishonored Lalage abide? 
Thy wife, and with a tainted memor}^ — 



SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 89 

^ly seared and blighted name, how would it tally 
With the ancestral honors of thy house, 
And with thy glory? 

Pol. Speak not to me of glo-y ! 
I hate — I loathe the name ; I do abhor 
The unsatisfactory and ideal thing. 
Art thou not Lalage, and I Politian? 
Do I not love — art thou not beautiful — 
"What need we more? Ha! glory! — now speak 

not of it: 
By all I hold most sacred and most solemn — 
By all my wishes now — my fears hereafter — 
By all I scorn on earth and hope iri heaven — 
There is no deed I would more glor}'- in, 
Than m thy cause to scoff at this same glory 
And trample it under foot. What matters it — 
What matters it, my fairest, and my best, 
That we go down unhonored and forgotten 
Into the dust — so we descend together. 
Descend together — and then — and then per- 
chance — 

Lal. Why dost thou pause, Politian? 

Pol. And then perchance 
Arise together, Lalage, and roam 
The starry and quiet dwellmgs of the blest, 
And still— 

Lal. Why dost thou pause, Politian? 

Pol. And still to^ 

Lal. Now, Earl of Leicester 



90 SCENES FROM ''POLlTIANr 

Thou lovest me, and in my heart of hearts 
I feel thru lovest me truly. 
Pol. Oh, Lalage ! 

{TJu-owing hunself upon his knee.) 
And lovest thou nie ? 

Lal. Hist ! hush ! within the gloom 
Of yonder trees methought a figure past — 
A spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noise- 
less — 
Like the grim shidow Conscience, solemn and 

noiseless. ( Walks aci'oss and re/ urns.) 
I was mistaken — 'twas but a giant bough 
Stirred by the autumn wind. Politian ! 

Pol. My Lalage — my love ! Why art thou 

moved? 
Why dost thou turn so pale ? Not Conscience' 

self, 
Far less a shadow which thou likenest to it, 
Should shake the firm spirit thus. ^ But the night 

wind 
Is chilly — and these melancholy boughs 
Throw over all things a gloom. 

Lal. Pol.tian! 
Thou speakest to me of love. Knowest thou the 

land 
With which all tongues are busy — a land new 

found — 
Miraculously found by one of Genoa — 
A thousand leagues within the golden west ? 
A fairy land of flowers, and fruit, and sunshine, 



SCENES FROM ' 'POLITIANr 9 1 

And crystal lakes, and over-arching forests, 
And mountains, around whose towering summits 

the winds 
Of Heaven untrammelled flow — which air to 

breathe 
Is Happiness now, and will be freedom hereafter 
In days that are to come? 

Pol. Oh, wilt thou — wilt thou 
Fly to that Paradise — my Lalage, wilt thou 
Fly thither with me ? There Care shall be for- 
gotten 
And Sorrow shall be no more, and Eros be all. 
And life shall then be mine, for I will live 
For thee, and in thine eyes — and thou shalt be 
No more a mourner — but the radiant Joys 
Shall wait upon thee, and the angel Hope 
Attend thee ever; and I will kneel to thee 
And worship thee, and call thee my beloved. 
My own, my beautiful, my love, my wife. 
My all ; — oh, wilt thou — wilt thou, Lalage, 
Fly thither with me ? 

Lal. a deed is to be done — 
Castiglione lives ! 

Pol. And he shall die! {Exit.) 

Lal. {after a pause). And — he — shall — die! 

alas ! 

Castiglione die ! Who spoke the words ? 
Where am I ? — what was it he said ? — Politian ! 
Thou art not gone — thou art not gone, Politian ! 
If eel thou art not gone — yet dare not look. 



92 SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 

Lest I behold thee not — thou couldst not go 
Wilh those words upon thy lips — Oh, speak to me ! 
And let me hear thy voice — one word — one word, 
To say thou art not gone — one little sentence, 
To say how thou dost scorn — how thou dost hate 
My womanly weakness. Ha! ha! thou <?;-/ not 

gone — 
Oh, speak to me! I kneia thou wouldst not go! 
1 knew thou wouldst not, couldst not, durst 

not go. 
Villain, thou art not gone — thou mockest me! 
And thus I clutch thee — thus ! He is gone, he 

is gone — 
Gone — gone. Where am I ? 'tis well — 'tis very 

well ! 
So that the blade be keen — the blow be sure, 
'Tis well, 'tis very well — alas! alas! 



V. 

TJie suburbs. Politian alone. 

PoLiTiAN. This weakness grows upon me. I am 
faint. 
And much I fear me ill — it will not do 
To die ere I have lived! — Stay — stay thy hand, 
O Azrael, yet awhile ! — Prince of the Powers 
Of Darkness and the Tomb, Oh, pity me ! 
Oh, pity me ! let me not perish now. 



SCE.VES FROM ''POLITIANr 9.> 

In the budding of my Paradisal Hope ! 
Give me to live yet — yet a little while: 
'Tis I who pray for life — I who so late 
Demanded but to die — what sayeth the Count? 

E7it£r Baldazzar. 

Baldazzar. That, knowing no cause of quarrel 
or of feud 
Between the Earl Politian and himself, 
He doth decline your cartel. 

Pol. What didst thou say ? 
What answer was it you brought me, go d Bal- 
dazzar ? 
With what excessive fragrance the zephyr comes 
Laden from yonder bowers ! — a fairer day. 
Ox one more worthy Italy, methinks 
No mortal eyes have seen ! — What said the Count! 

Bal. That he, Castiglione, not being aware 
Of any feud existing, or any cause 
Of quarrel between your lordship and himself, 
Cannot accept the challenge. 

Pol. It is most true — 
All this is very true. When saw you, sir. 
When saw you, now, Baldazzar, in the frigid 
Ungenial Britain which we left so lately, 
A heaven so calm as this — so utterly free 
From the evil taint of clouds ? — And he did say ? 

Bal. No more, my lord, than I have told you, 



94 SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 

The Count Castiglione will not fight, 
Having no cause for quarrel. 

Pol. Now this is true — 
All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar 
And I have not forgotten it — thou'lt do me 
A piece of service ; wilt thou go back and say 
Unto this man, that I, the Earl of Leicester, 
Kold him a villain ? — thus much, I prythee, say 
Unto the Count — it is exceeding just 
He should have cause for quarrel. 

Bal. My lord ! — my friend ! 

Pol. {aside). 'Tis he — he comes himself! 
{A loud.) Thou reasonest well. 
I know what thou wouldst say — not send the mes- 
sage — 
Well !— I will think of it— I will not send it. 
Now prythee, leave me — hither does come a person 
With whom affairs of a most private nature 
I would adjust. 

Bal. I go — to-morrow we meet, 
Do we not? — at the Vatican. 

Pol. At the Vatican. {Exit Baldazzar.) 

Entc7- Castiglione. 

Cas. The Earl of Leicester here ! 

Pol. I a7n the Earl of Leicester, and thou seest, 
Dost thou not, that I am here? 

Cas. My lord, some strange. 
Some singular mistake — misunderstanding — 



SCENES EROM 'TOLITIANr 95 

Hath without doubt arisen : thou hast been urged 
Thereby, in heat of anger, to address 
Some words most unaccountable, in writing, 
To me, Castiglione ; the bearer being 
Baldazzar, Duke of Surrey, I am aware 
Of nothing which might warrant thee in this thing. 
Having given thee no offence. Ha! — am I right? 
'Twas a mis:ake? — undoubtedly — we all 
Do err at times, 

Pol. Draw, villain, and prate no more ! 

Cas. Ha! — draw? — and villain? have at thee 
then at once. 
Proud Earl! {Draius.) 

Pol. {drawing). Thus to the expiatory tomb, 
Untimely sepulchre, I do devote thee 
In the name of Lalage ! 

Cas. (letting fall his sword a7id recoiling to 
the extremity of the stage). Of Lalage ! 
Hold off — thy sacred hand ! — avaunt I say ! 
Avaunt — I will not fight thee — indeed I dare not. 

Pol. Thou wilt not fight with me, didst say. 
Sir Count? 
Shall I be baffled thus? — now this is well; 
Didst say thou darest not? Ha ! 

Cas. I dare not — dare not — 
Hold off thy hand — with that beloved name 
So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee — 
I cannot — dare not. 

Pol. Now by m}- halidom 
I do believe thee ! — coward, I do believe thee ! 



9^ SCENES FROM ''POLITIAN." 

Cas. Ha ! — coward ! — this may not be ! 

{Clutches his sword and staggers toward 
PoLiTiAN, but his purpose is changed be- 
fore reaching him, arid he falls upoji his 
knee at the feet of the Earl. ) 

Alas ! my lord, 
It is — it is — most true. In such, a cause 
I am the veriest coward. Oh, pity me ! 

Pol. {greatly softened). Alas ! — I do — indeed 
I pity thee. 

Cas. And Lalage 

Pol. Scoundrel ! — arise and die ! 
Cas. It needeth not be — thus — thus — Oh, let me 
die 
Thus on my bended knee. It were most fitting 
That in this deep humiliation I perish. 
For in the fight I will not raise a hand 
Against thee. Earl of Leicester. Strike thou 
home — {Baring his bosom.) 

Here is no let or hindrance to th}^ weapon — 
Strike home. I 7vill not fight thee. 

Pol. Now s'Death and Hell! 
Am I not — am I not sorely — grievously tempted 
To take thee at thy word ? But mark me, sir! 
Think not to fly me thus. Do thou prepare 
For public insult in the streets — before 
The eyes of the citizens. I" 11 follow thee — 
Like an avenging spirit I'll follow thee 
Even unto death. Before those whom thou 
lovest — 



SCENES FROM ''POLITIANr 97 

Before all Rome I'll taunt thee, villain, — I'll taunt 

thee, 
Dost hear ? with coivardicc — thou wilt not fight 

me ? 
Thou liest ! thou shalt ! {Exit.) 

Cas. Now this indeed is just ! 
Most righteous, and most just, avenging Heaven ! 



POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH. 



Private reasons — some of which have refer- 
ence to the sin of plagiarism, and others to 
the date of Tennyson's first poems — have in- 
duced me, after some hesitation, to republish 
these, the crude compositions of my earliest 
boyhood. They are printed verbatim — with- 
out alteration from the original edition* — the 
date of which is too remote to be judiciously 
acknowledged. E. A. P. 

♦This statement is incorrect.— Ed. 



SONNET: TO SCIENCE. 

Science ! true daughter of Old Time thou art ! 

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, 

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities ? 
How should he love thee ? or how deem thee wise, 

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, 

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing ? 
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car ? 

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
To seek a shelter in some happier star ? 

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, 
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree ? 



AL AARAAF^ 

Part I. 

Oh ! nothing earthly save the ray 

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye, 

As in those gardens where the day 

Springs from the gems of Circassy — 

Oh ! nothing earthly save the thrill 

Of melody in woodland rill — 

Or (music of the passion-hearted) 

Joy's voice so peacefully departed 

That, like the murmur in the shell, 

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell — 

Oh ! nothing of the dross of ours — 

Yet all the beauty — all the flowers 

That list our Love, and deck our bowers — 

Adorn yon world afar, afar — 

The wandering star. 

'Twas a sweet time for Nesace — for there 
Her world lay lolling on the golden air, 

* A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared 
suddenly in the heavens— attained, in a few days, a br 1- 
liancy surpassing that of Jupiter— then as suddenly dis- 
appeared, and has never been seen since. 



AL AARAAF, 103 

Near four bright suns — a temporary rest — 

An oasis in desert of the blest 

Away — away — 'mid seas of rays that roll 

Empyrean splendor o'er th' uncliained soul — 

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense) 

Can struggle to its destined eminence — 

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode, 

And late to ours, the favored one of God — 

But, now, the ruler of an anchor' d realm. 

She throws aside the sceptre — leaves the holm, 

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns, 

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs. 

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth, 
Whence sprang the " Idea of Beauty " into birth, 
(Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star, 
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar, 
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt) 
She looked into Infinity — and knelt. 
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled — 
Fit emblems of the model of her world — 
Seen but in beauty — not impeding sight 
Of other beauty glittering thro' the light — 
A wreath that twined each starry form around. 
And all the opal'd air in color bound. 

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed 
Of flowers; of lilies such as rear'd the head 
On the fair Capo Deucato,* and sprang 
So eagerly around about to hang 

* On Santa Maura— olim Deucadia. 



I04 AL AARAAR 

Upon the flying footsteps of — deep pride — 
Of her who loved a mortal — and so died.* 
The Sephalica, budding with young bees, 
Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees: 
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'df 
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd 
All other loveliness : its honied dew 
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew) 
Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven, 
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven 
In Trebizond — and on a sunny flower 
So like its own above, that, to this hour. 
It still remaineth, torturing the bee 
With madness, and unwonted reverie: 
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf 
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief 
Disconsolate linger — grief that hangs her head. 
Repenting follies that full long have fled, 
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air. 
Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair: 
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light 
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night : 
And Clytia pondering between many a sun,:}: 

* Sappho. 

t This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and 
Tournefort. The bee, feeding u^jon its biossom, becomes 
intoxicated. 

X Clj^tia — ThcCiirysantJu'tfium Pcruviainiiu, or, to employ 
a better-known term, the turn sol— \s\\\q\\ turns contin- 
ually towards the sun, covers itsel , like Peru, the country 
from which it comes, With dewy clouds which cool and 



AL AARAAF. 105 

While pettish tears adown her petals run : 
And that aspiring flower that sprang onEarth'^' — 
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth, 
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing 
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king : 
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown f 
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone: 
And thy most lovely purple perfume. Zante ! X 
Isola d'oro! — Fior di Levante! 
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever§ 
With Indian Cupid down the holy river — 
Fair flowers, and fairy ! to whose care is given 
To bear the Goddess' song, in odors, up to 
Heaven: || 

refresh its flowers during the most violent heat ot the 
day.— B. DE St. Pierre. 

* There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris a 
species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose la'^ge 
and beautiful flower exhales a strong odor of the vanilla 
during the time of ils expansion, which is very short. 
It does not blow till towards the month of July; you then 
perceive it gradually open its petals -expand them— fade 
-and die.— St. Pierre. 

t There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the 
Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of 
three or four feet— thus preserving its head above water 
in the swellings of the river. 

t The Hyacinth. 

§ It is a fiction of the Indians that Cupid was first seen 
floating in one of these down the river Ganges, an J that he 
still loves the cradle of his childhood. 

And golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers 
of the saints— Rev. of St. John. 



io6 AL AARAAF. 

" Spirit ! that dwellest where, 

In the deep sky, 
The terrible and fair, 

In beauty vie ! 
Beyond the line of blue — 

The boundary of the star 
Which turneth at the view 

Of thy barrier and thy bar — 
Of the barrier overgone 

By the comets who were cast 
From their pride, and from their throne, 

To be drudges till the last — 
To be carriers of fire 

(The red fire of their heart) 
With speed that may not tire, 

And with pain that shall not part — 
Who livest — that we know — 

In Eternity — we feel- 
But the shadow of whose brow 

What spirit shall reveal? 
Tho' the beings whom thy Nesace, 

Thy iressenger hath known 
Have dream'd for thy Infinity 

A model of their own* — 
Thy will is done, O God ! 

The star hath ridden high 

* The Humanitarians held that God was to be under- 
stood as having leally a human ioxvs\.— Vide Clarke's 
Sermons, vol. i, pag -. 26, fol. edit. 

The drift of Milton's argument leads him to employ 



AL AARAAF. 107 

Thro' many a tempest, but she rode 

Beneath thy burning eye ; 
And here, in thought, to thee — 

In thought that can alone 
Ascend thy empire and so be 

A partner of thy throne — 
By winged Fantasy * 

My embassy is given, 
Till secrecy^sha'l knowledge be 

In the environs of Heaven." 

language which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon 
their doctrine ; but it will be seen immediately that he 
guards himself against the charge of having adopted one of 
the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the Church.— 
Dr. Sumner's Notes on Milton's Christian Doc- 
trine. 

This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the con- 
trary, could never have been very general. Andeus, a 
Syrian of Mesopotamia, was condemned for the opinion as 
heretical. He lived in the beginning of the fourth century. 
His disciples were called Anthropomorphites.— T/V/f Du 
Pin. 
Among Milton's minoi' poems are these lines:— 

Dicite sacrorum praesides nemorum Deae, &c. 

Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine 

Natura solers finxit humanum genus ? 

Eternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo, 

Unusque etuniversus exemplar Dei. 
And afterwards, 

Non ctii p'-o''undum Cascitas lumen dedit 

Dircaeus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, &c. 

* Seltsanen Tochter Jovis 
Seinem Schosskinde 
Der Phantasie.— Goethe. 



io8 AL AARAAR 

She ceased — and buried then her burning 
cheek. 
Abashed, amid the lilies there, to seek 
A shelter from the fervor of His eye ; 
For the stars trembled at the Deity. 
She stirred not — breathed not — for a voice was 

there 
How solemnl}^ prevading the calm air ! 
A sound of silence on the startled ear 
Which dreamy poets name "the music of the 

sphere." 
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call 
" Silence" — which is the merest word of all. 
All nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things 
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings — 
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high 
The eternal voice of God is passing by. 
And the red wings are withering in the sky ! 

"Whattho' in worlds which sightless cycles 



run 



* 



Link'd to a little system, and one S"in — 
Where all my love is folly and the crowd 
Still think my terrors but the thunder-cloud, 
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath — 
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?) 
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun 
The sands of time grow dimmer as they run, 

* Sightless— too small to be seen.— Legge. 



AL AARAAF. 109 

Yet thine is my resplendency, so given 

To bear my secrets thro' the upper Heaven. 

Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly, 

With all thy train, athwart the moony sk}^ — 

Apart — like fireflies in Sicilian night,* 

And vv4ng to other world=i another light! 

Divulge the secrets of thy embassy 

To the proud orbs that twinkle — and so be 

To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban 

Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man ! " 

LTp rose the maiden in the yellow night. 
The single-mooned eve! — on Earth we plight 
Our faith to one love — and one moon adore — 
Tlie birthplace of young Beauty had no more. 
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours, 
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, 
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain 
Her way — but left not yet her Therassean reign, f 

Part H. 
High on a mountain of enamelled head — 
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed 
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease, 
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees 

* I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the 
fireflies;— they will collect in a body and fly off, from a 
common centre, in^o innumerable radii. 

fTherasasa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Se- 
neca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes 
of astonished mariners. 



no AL AARAAF. 

With many a muttered " hope to be forgiven " 
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven — 
Of rosy head, that towering far away 
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray 
Of sunken suns at eve — at noon of night, 
While the moon danced with the fair stranger 

light- 
U'preared upon such height arose a pile 
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen d air, 
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile 
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there, 
And nursled the young mountain in its lair. 
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall* 
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall 
Of their own dissolution, while they die — 
Adorning then the dwellings of the sk5^ 
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down. 
Sat gently on these columns as a crown — 
A window of one circular diamond, there, 
Lock'd out above into the purple air. 
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain 
And hallow' d all the beauty twice again. 
Save when, between tb' Empyrean andthat ring, 
S )me eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing. 
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen 
The dimness of this world: that grayish green 
That nature loves the best for Beauty's grave 
Lurked in each cornice, round each architrave — 

* Some star which, from the ruin'd roof 
Of thak'd Olympus, by mischance, did fall.— Milton. 



AL AARAAK m 

And every sculptured cherub thereabout 
That from his marble dwelling peered out, 
Seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche — 
Achaian statues in a world so rich ? 
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis- — 
From Baalbec, and the stilly, clear abyss 
Of beautiful Gomorrha ! O, the wavef 
Is now upon thee — but too late to save ! 

Sound loves to revel in a summer night: 
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight 
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco ,X 
Of many a wild star-gazer long ago — 

* Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, " Je con- 
nois bien Tadmiration qu'inspirent ces ruines — mais un 
palais erige au pied d'une chaine des rochers sterils— 
peut il etre un chef d'oeuvre des arts ! " 

t " O, the wave "— UlaDeguisi is the Turkish appellation; 
but, on its own shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or Almo- 
tanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities 
engulphed in the "Dead Sea." In the Valley of Siddim 
were five— Admah, Zeboim, Zoar, Sodom, and Gomorrha. 
Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo 
thirteen (engulphed)— but the last is out c f all reason. 

It is said [Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, 
Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux] that after an exces- 
sive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, &c., are seen 
above the surface. At any season, such remains may be 
discovered by looking down into the transparent lake, 
and at such distances as would argue the existence of 
many settlements in the space now usurped by the 
" Asphaltites." 

X Eyracor-Chaldea. 



112 AL AARAAF. 

That stealeth ever on the ear of him 
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim, 
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud — 
Is not its form — its voice — most palpable and 
loud ? - 

But what is this ! — It cometh —and it brings 
A music with it — 'tis the rush of wings — 
A pause — and then a sweeping, falling strain. 
And Nesace is in her halls again. 
From the wild energy of wanton haste 

Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart; 
And zone that clung around her gentle waist 

Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart. 
Within the centre of that hall to breathe 
She paus'd and panted, Zanthe! all beneath 
The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair, 
And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there ! 

Young flowers were whispering in melodyf 
To happy flowers that night — and tree to tree : 
Fountains were gushing music as they fell 
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell ; 
Yet silence came upon material things — 
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings — 



* I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound 
of the darkness as it stole over the horizon. 

f'Fair'esuse flowers for their character}'. '—Merkv 
Wives of Windsor. 



AL AARAAR 113 

And sound alone that from the spirit sprang 
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang: 

" 'Neath the blue-bell or streamer — 
Or tufted wild spray 
That keeps, from the dreamer, 

The moonbeam away* — 
Bright beings ! that ponder, 

With half closing eyes, 
On the stars which your wonder 

Hath drawn from the skies, 
Till they glance thro' the shade, and 

Come down to your brow 
Like eyes of the maiden 

Who calls on you now — 
Arise ! from your dreaming 

In violet bowers, 
To duty beseeming 

These star-litten hours — 
And shake from your tresses 

Encumbei'd with dew 
The breath of those kisses 

That cumber them too — 
(O ! how, without you. Love! 

Could angels be blest?) 

* In Scripture is this passage— "The sun shall not smite 
thee by day, nor the moon by night." It is perhaps not 
generally known that the moon, in Egypt, hps the effect of 
producing blindness to those who sleep with the face ex- 
posed to its rays, to which circumstance the passage evi- 
dently allud'.-s. 



114 AL AARAAF. 

Those kisses of true love 

That lull d ye to rest ! 
Up ! — shake from your wing 

Each hindering thing : 
The dew o : the night — 

It would weigh down 3-our flight : 
And true love caresses — 

O ! leave them apart ! 
They are light on the tresses, 

But lead on the heart. 

Ligeia ! Ligeia ! 

]\Iy beautiful one! 
Whose harshest idea 

Will to melDdy run, 
O ! is it thy will 

On the breezes to toss? 
Or, capriciously still, 

Like the lone Albatross,* 
Incumbent on night 

(As she on the air) 
To keep watch with delight 

On the harmony there? 

Ligeia ! wherever 

Thy image may be,^ 
No magic shall sever 

Thy music from thee. 

* The Albatrosi is said to sleep on the wing. 



AL AAKAAK 115 

Thou hast bound many eyes 

In a dreamy sleep — 
But the strains still arise 

Which thy vigilance keep — 
The sound of the rain, 

Which leaps down to the flower 
And dances again 

In the rhythm of the shower — 
The murmur that springs* 

From the growing of grass — 
Are the music of things — 

But are modell'd, alas!-^ 
Away, then, my dearest, 

O ! hie thee away 
To springs that lie clearest 

Beneath the moon-ray — 
To lone lake that smiles, 

In its dream of deep rest. 
At the many star-isles 

That enjewel its breast — 
Where wild flowers, creeping. 

Have mingled their shade, 
On its margin is sleeping 

Full many a maid — 



* I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I 
am now unable to obtain, and quote from memor}-:—" The 
verie essence, and, as it were, springeheade and origine 
cf all musicke is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the 
trees of the forest do make when the\' growe." 



1 16 AL AARAAF. 

Some have left the cool glade, and 

Have slept with the bee — * 
Arouse them, my maiden. 

On moorland and lea — 
Go ! breathe on their slumber, 

All softly in ear, 
The musical number 

They slumber' d to hear — 
For what can awaken 

An angel s ) soon 

Whose sleep hath been taken 

Beneath the cold moon. 

As the spell which no slumber 
Of witchery may test, 

The rhythmical number 
Which lulled him to rest ?" 

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view, 

A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean thro' 



* The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be 
nnonlight. 

The rhyme in th's verse, as in one about sixty lines be- 
fore, has an appearance of affectation. It is, however, 
imitated from Sir Walter Scott, or rather from Claud 
Halcro— m whose mouth I admired its effect:— 

" Oh! were there an island, 

Tho' ever so wild. 
Where woman might smile, and 

No man be beguiled," &c. 



AL AARAAF. 117 

Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy 

flight- 
Seraphs in all but "Knowledge," the keen light 
That fell, refracted, thro' thy bounds, afar, 
O Death ! from eye of God upon that star: 
Sweet was that error — sweeter still that death — 
Sweet was that error — ev'n with tis the breath 
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy — 
To them 'twere the Simoom, and would destroy — 
For what (to them) availeth it to know 
That Truth is Falsehood— or that BHss is Woe ? 
Sweet was their death — with them to die was rife 
With the last ecstasy of satiate life — 
Beyond that death no immortality — 
But sleep that pondereth and is not "to be" — 
And there — oh ! may my weary spirit dwell — 
Apart from Heaven's Eternity — and yet how far 

from Hell !* 

* With the Arabians there is a medium between 
Heaven and Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but 
yet do not attain that tranquil an i even happiness w*hiich 
they suppose to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment. 

" Un no rompido sueno— 
Un dia puro— allegre— libre 
Quiera— 

Libre de amor— de zelo— 
De odio— de tsperanza— de rezelo." 

—Luis Ponce De Leon. 

Sorrow is not excluded from " Al Aaraaf," but it is that 
sorrow which the living love to che: ish for the dead, and 



ii8 AL AARAAK 

What guilty spirit, in what shrubber}'- din:, 
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn ? 
But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts 
To those who hear not for their beating hearts. 
A maiden angel and her seraph-lover — 
O ! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over) 
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty knowm? 
Unguided Love hath fallen — 'mid "tears of per- 
fect moan,"* 

He was a goodly spirit — he who fell: 
A wanderer by the moss-y-mantled well — 
A gazer on the lights that shine above — 
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love: 
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there 
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair — 
And they, and every mossy spring were holy 
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy. 
The night had found (to him a night of wo) 
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo 
Beetling its bends athwart the solemn sky, 
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it 
lie. 

which in some minds resembles the delirium of opium. 
The passionate excitement of Love, and the buoyancy of 
spirit attendant upon intoxication, are its less holy plea- 
sures—the price of v/hich, to those souls who make choice 
of "Al Aaraafas their residence after life, is final death 
and annihilation. 

* " There be tears of perfect moan 

Wept for thee in Helicon."— Miltom. 



AL AARAAF. 119 

Here sate he with his love — his dark eye bent 
With eagle gaze along the firmament : 
Now turned it upon her — but ever then 
It trembled to the orb of E>.rth again. 

" lanthe, deare>t, see! how dim that ray! 
How lovely 'tis to look so far away! 
She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve 
I left her gorgeous halls — nor mourn' d to leave. 
That eve — that eve — I should remember well — 
The sun-ray dropp'd, in Lemnos. with a spell 
On th' Arabesque carving of a gilded hall 
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall — 
And on my eye-lids — O, the heavy Hght ! 
How drowsily it weighed them into night ! 
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran 
With Persian Saadi in his Gullistan: 
But O, that light!— I slumbered— Death, the 

while, 
Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle 
So softly that no single silken hair 
Awoke that slept — or knew that he was there. 

*' The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon 
Was a proud temple called the Parthenon ;- 
More beauty clung around her columned wall 



* It was entire in 1687— the most elevated spot in Athens. 



I20 AL AARAAK 

Than even thy glowing bosom beats withal,* 
And when old Time my wing did disenthral 
Thence sprang I — as the eagle from his tower, 
And years I left behind me in an hour. 
What time upon her airy bounds I hung 
One ha'f the garden of her globe was flung 
Unrolling as a chart unto my view — 
Tenantless cities of the desert too! 
lanthe, beauty crowded on me then, 
And half I wished to be again of men." 

" My Angelo! and why of them to be? 
A brighter dwelling place is here for thee — 
And greener fields than in yon world above, 
And woman's loveliness — and passionate love." 

" But list, lanthe, when the air so soft 
Failed, as my pennon'd spirit leapt aloft f 
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy — but the world 
I left so late was into chaos hurl'd, 
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart, 
And rolled a flame, the fiery Heavens athwart. 
Rethought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar, 
And fell — not swiftly as I rose before. 



* " Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows 

Than have the white breasts of the queen of love. 

—Marlowe. 

t Pennon, for pinion.— Milton. 



AL AARAAR 121 

But with a downward, tremulous motion thro' 
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto! 
Nor long the measure of my falling hours, 
For nearest to all stars was thine to ours — 
Dread star! that came, amid a niphl of mirth. 
A red Daedalion on the timid E/rth." 

" We came — and to thy Earth — but not to us 
Be, given our lady's bidding to discuss: 
We came, my love ; around, above, below, 
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go. 
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod 
She grants to us as granted by her God — 
But, Angelo, than thine grey Time unfurled 
Never his fairy wing o'er fairier world! 
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes 
Alone could see the phantom in the skies, 
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be 
Headlong thitherward o'er the starry sea — 
But when its glory swelled upon the sky. 
As glowing Beauty's bust beneath man's eye. 
We paused before the heritage of men. 
And thy star trembled — as doth Beauty then ! " 

Thus in discourse, the lovers whiled away 

The night that waned and waned and brought no 

day. 
They feli: for Heaven to them no hope imparts 
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts. 



TAMERLANE. 

Kind solace in a dying hour! 

Such, father, is not (now) my theme — 
I will not madly deem that power 

Of Earth may shrive me of the sin 
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in — 

I have no time to dote or dream : 
You call it hope — that fire of fire ! 
It is but agony of desire 
If I can hope — O God! I can — 

Its fount is holier — more divine — 
I would not call thee fool, old man, 

But such is not a gift of thine. 

Know thou the secret of a spirit 

Bowed from its wild pride into shame 
O yearning heart! I did inherit 

Thy withering portion with the fame, 
The searing glory which hath shone 
Amid the Jewels of my throne. 
Halo of Hell ! and with a pain 
Not Hell shall make me fear again — 



TAMERLANE. 123 

craving heart, for the lost flowers 
And sunshine of my summer hours! 
The undying voice of that dead time, 
With its interminable chime, 
Rings, in the spirit of a spell, 

Upon thy emptiness — a knell. 

1 have not always been as now : 
The fevered diadem on my brow 

I claimed and won usurpingly — 
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given 
Rome to the Caesar — this to me ? 
The heritage of a kingly mind. 
And a proud spirit which hath striven 
Triumphantly with human kind. 

On mountain soil I first drew life : 
The mists of the Taglay have shed 
Nightly their dews upon my head, 

And, I believe, the winged strife 
And tumult of the headlong air 
Have nestled in my very hair. 

So late from Heaven — that dew — it fell 

('Mid dreams of an unholy night) 
Upon me with the touch of Hell, 

While the red flashing of the light 
From clouds that hung, like banners, o'er. 

Appeared to my half-closing eye 

The pageantry of monarchy ; 
And the deep trumpet thunder's roar 



124 TAMERLANE. 

Came hurriedly upon me, telling 

Of human battle, where my voice, 
My own voice, silly child ! — was swelling 
(O ! how my spirit would rejoice, 
And leap within me at the cry) 
The battle-cry of Victory ! 



The rain came down upon my head 
Unshelter'd — and the heavy wind 
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind. 

It was but man, I thought, who shed 
Laurels upon me: and the rush — 

The torrent of the chilly air 

Gurgled within my ear the crush 

Of empires — with the captive's prayer — 
The hum of suitors — and the tone 
Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne. 



My passions, from that hapless hour 
Usurped a tyranny which men 

Have deemed since I reached to power 
My innate nature — be it so : 
But, father, there lived one who, then, 

Then — in my boyhood — when their fire 
Burn'd wuth a still intenser glow 

(For passion must, with youth, expire) 
E'en then who knew this iron heart 
In woman's weakness had a part. 



TAMERLANE. 125 

I have no words — alas! — to tell 
The loveliness of loving well ! 
Nor would I now attempt to trace 
The more than beauty of a face 
Whose lineaments, upon my mind, 

Are shadows on th' unstable wind. 

Thus I remember having dwelt 

Some page of early lore upon, 
With loitering eye, till I have felt 
The letters — with their meaning — melt 

To fantasies — with none. 



O, she was worthy ot all love ! 

Love — as in infancy — was mine — 
'Twas such as angel minds above 

Might envy: her young heart the shrine 
On which my every hope and thought 

Were incense — then a goodly gift. 

For they were childish and upright — 
Pure — as her young example taught : 

Why did I leave it, and, adrift. 
Trust to the fire within, for light? 

We grew in age — and love — together — 
Roaming the forest, and the wild ; 

My breast her shield in wintry weather — 
And, when the friendly sunshine smiled. 

And she would mark the opening skies, 

/ saw no heaven — but in her eyes. 



126 TAMERLANE. 

Young Love's first lesson is the heart; 

For 'mid that sunshine and those smiles, 
When, from our little cares apart. 

And laughing at her girlish wiles, 
I'd throw me on her throbbing breast, 

And pour my spirit out in tears — 
There was no need to speak the rest — 

No need to quiet any fears 
Of her — who ask'd no reason why, 
But turn'd on me her quiet eye! 

Yet more than worthy of the love 
My spirit struggled with, and strove, 
When, on the mountain peak alone, 
Ambition lent it a new tone — 
I had no being — but in thee : 

The world and all it did contain 
In the earth — the air — the sea — 

Its joy — its li'.tle lot of pain 
That was new pleasure — the ideal. 

Dim, vanities of dreams by night — 
And dimmer nothings which were real— 
(Shadows — and a more shadowy light I) 
Parted upon their misty wings, 
And so, confusedly, became 
Thine image and — a name — a name ! 
Two separate — yet most intimate things. 

I was ambitious — have you known 

The passion, father? You have not: 



TAMERLANE. 127 

A cottager, I mark'd a throne 
Of half the world as all my own, 

And murmur' d at such lowly lot — 
But, just like any other dream. 

Upon the vapor of the dew 
]\Iy own had past, did not the beam 

Of beauty which did while it thro' 
The minute — the hour — the day — oppress 
My mind with double loveliness. 
We walk'd together on the crown 
Of a high mountain which looked down 
Afar from its proud natural towers 
Of rock and forest, on the hills — 
The dwindled hills ! begirt with bowers 
And shouting with a thousand rills. 

I spoke to her of power and pride, 

But mystically — in such guise 
That she might deem it nought beside 

The moment's converse ; in her eyes 
I read, perhaps too carelessly — 

A mingled feeling with my own — 
The flush on her bright cheek, to me 

Seem'd to become a queenly throne 
Too well that I should let it be 

Light in the wilderness alone. 

I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then, 
And donnd a visionary crown — 
Yet it was not that Fantasy 
Had thrown her mantle over me — 



128 TAMERLANE. 

But that, among the rabble — men, 

Lion Ambition is chain' d down — 
And crouches to a keeper's hand — 
Not so in deserts where the grand — 
The wild — the terrible conspire 
With their own breath to fan his fire. 

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand! — 

Is she not queen of Earth? her pride 
Above all cities? in her hand 

Their destinies? in all beside 
Of glory which the world hath known 
Stands she not nobly and alone? 
Falling — her veriest stepping-stone 
Shall form the pedestal of a throne — 
And who her sovereign? Timour — he 

Whom the astonished people saw- 
Striding o'er empires haughtily 
A diadem' d outlaw? 

O, human love! thou spirit given. 
On Earth, of all w^e hope in Heaven! 
Which fair St into the soul like rain 
Upon the Siroc-withered plain, 
And failing in thy power to bless, 
But leav'st the heart a wilderness! 
Idea ! which bindest life around 
With music of so strange a sound 
And beauty of so wild a birth — 
Farewell ! for I have won the earth. 



TAMERLANE. 129 

When Hope, that eagle that tower' d, could see 

No cliff beyond him in the sky, 
His pinions were bent droopmgly — 

And homeward turn'd his softened e3^e. 
'Twas sunset: when the sun will part 
There comes a sullenness of heart 
To him who still would look upon 
The glory of the summer sun. 
That soul will hate the ev'ning mist 
So often lovely, and will list 
To the sound of the coming darkness (known 
To those whose spirits hearken) as one 
Who, in a dream fo night, wo it Id fly, 
But carmof, from a danger nigh. 

What tho' the moon — the white moon 
Shed all the splendor of her noon, 
Her smile is chilly — and he)' beam, 
In that time of dreariness, will seem 
(So like you gather in your breath) 
A portrait taken after death. 
And boyhood is a summer sun 
Whose waning is the dreariest one — 
For all we live to know is known 
And all we seek to keep hath flown — 
Let life, then, as the day- flower, fall 
With the noon-day beauty — which is sC\. 
I reach' d my home — my home no more — 

For all had flown who made it so. 
I passed from out its mossy door. 



ISO TAMERLANE. 

And, tho' my thread was soft and low 
A voice came from the threshold stone 
Of one whom I had earlier known — 
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show 
On beds of fire that burn below. 
An humbler heart — a deeper wo. 

Father, I firmly do believe — 
I know — for Death who comes for me 
From regions of the blest afar. 
Where there is nothing to deceive. 
Hath left his iron gate ajar. 
And rays of truth you cannot see 

Are flashing thro' Eternity 

I do believe that Eblis hath 
A snare in every human path — 
Else how, when in the holy grove 
I wandered of the idol, Love, — 
Who daily scents the snowy wings 
With incense of burnt-offerings 
From the most unpolluted things 
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven 
Above with trellis' d rays from Heaven 
No mote may shun — no tiniest fly — 
The light'ning of his eagle eye — 
How was it that Ambition crept, 
Unseen, amid the revels there. 
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt 
In the tangles of Love's very hair ? 



A DREAM. 

In visions of the dark night 
I have dreamed of joy departed — 

But a waking dream of life and light 
Hath left me broken-hearted. 

Ah ! what is not a dream by day 

To him w^hose eyes are cast 
On things around him with a ray 

Turned back upon the past ? 

That holy dream^that holy dream, 
While all the world were chiding, 

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam 
A lonely sp-'rit guiding. 

What though that light, thro' storm and night, 

So trembled from afar — 
What could there be more purely bright 

In Truth's day-star ? 



ROMANCE. 

Romance, who loves to nod and sing, 
With drowsy head and folded wing, 
Among the green leaves as the}- shake 
Far down within some shadowy lake, 
To me a painted paroquet 
Hath been — a most familiar bird — 
Taught me my alphabet to say — 
To lisp my very earliest word 
While in the wild wood I did lie, 
A child — with a most knowing eye. 
Of late, eternal Condor years 
So shake the very Heaven on high 
With tumult as they thunder by, 
I have no time for idle cares 
Through gazing on the unquiet sky. 
And when an hour with calmer wings 
Its down upon my spirit flings — 
That little time with lyre and rhyme 
To while away — forbidden things ! 
My heart would feel to be a crime 
Unless it trembled with the strings. 



FAIRYLAND. 

Dim vales — and shadowy floods — 

And cloudy-looking woods, 

Whose forms we can't discover 

For the tears that drip all over 

Huge moons there wax and wane — - 

Again — again — again — 

Every moment of the night — 

For ever changing places — 

And they put out the star-light 

With the breath from their pale faces. 

About twelve by the moon-dial 

One more filmy than the rest 

(A kind which, upon trial, 

They have found to be the best) 

Comes down — still down — and down 

With its centre on the crown 

Of a mountain's eminence, 

While its wide circumference 

In easy drapery falls 

Over hamlets, over halls. 

Wherever they may be — 

O'er the strange woods — o'er the sea- 



134 FAIRYLAND. 

Over spirits on the wing — 
Over every drowsy thing — 
And buries them tip quite 
In a labyrinth of light — 
And then how deep! — O, deep! 
Is the passion of their sleep. 
In the morning they arise, 
And their moony covering 
Is soaring in the skies, 
"With the te.npests as they toss. 

Like almost any thing— 

Or a yellow Albatross. 
They use that moon no more 
For the same end as before — 
Videlicet a tent— 
Which I think extravagant. 
Its atomies, however. 
Into a shower dissever, 
Of which those butterflies 
Of Earth, who seek the skies. 
And so come down again 
(Never-contented things!) 
Have brought a specimen 
Upon their quivering wings. 



TO . 

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see 

The wanton est singing birds, 
Are lips — and all thy melody 

Of lip -begotten words — 

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined 

Then desolately fall, 
O God ! on my funereal mind 

Like starlight on a pall — 

Th}^ heart — thy heart ! — I wake and sigh. 

And sleep to dream till day 
Of the truth that gold can never buy — 

Of the baubles that it may. 



TO THE RIVER 



Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow 

Of crystal, wandering water, 
Thou art an emblem of the glow 

Of beaut)^ — the unhidden heart— 
The playful maziness of art 
In old Alberto's dauhtger; 

But when within thy wave she looks — 

Which glistens then, and trembles — 
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks 

Her worshipper resembles; 
For in his heart, as in thy stream, 

Her image deeply lies — 
His heart which trembles at the beam 

Of her soul-searching eyes. 



THE LAKE. TO 



In spring of youth it was my lot 

To haunt of the wide world a spot 

The which I could not love the less— 

So lovely was the loneliness 

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, 

And the tall pines that towered around. 

But when the Night had thrown her pall 

Upon that spot, as upon all, 

And the mystic wind went by 

Murmuring in melody — 

Then — ah, then, I would awake 

To the terror of the lone lake. 

Yet that terror was not fright, 

But a tremulous delight — 

A feeling not the jewelled mine 

Could teach or bribe me to define 

Nor Love— although the Love were thine. 

Death was in that poisonous wave, 

And in its gulf a fitting grave 

For him who thence could solace bring 

To his lone imagining — 

Whose solitary soul could make 

An Eden of that dim lake. 



SO.VG. 

I SAW thee on thy bridal day — 
When a burning blush came o'er thee. 

Though happiness around thee lay, 
The world all love before thee : 

And in th'ne eye a kindling light 

(Whatever it might be) 
Was all on Earth my aching sight 

Of Loveliness could see. 

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame — 

As such it well may pass — 
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame 

In the breast of him, alas! 

Who saw thee on that bridal day, 

When that deep blush wou/d come o'er thee, 
Though happiness around thee lay, 

The world all love before thee. 



LATER POEMS. 



A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. 

Take this kiss upon the brow ! 

And, in parting from you now, 

Thus much let me avow — 

You are not wrong, who deem 

That my days have been a dream ; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day. 

In a vision, or in none. 

Is it therefore the less gojie ? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 

I stand amid the roar 
Of a surf-tormented shore. 
And I hold within my hand 
Grains of the golden sand- 
How few ! yet how they creep 
Through my fingers to the deep, 
While I weep— while I weep ! 
O God ! can I not grasp 
Them with a tighter clasp? 
O God ! can I not save 
Otie from the pitiless wave? 
Is all that we see or seem 
But a dream within a dream? 



THE BELLS. 



Hear the sledges with the bells — 
Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

lu the icy air of night ' 
While the stars, that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
With a crystalline delight ; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells. 
Bells, bells, bells— 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 



Hear the mellow wedding bells. 
Golden bells ! 
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! 



THE BELLS. i43 

Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight! 
From the molten -golden notes, 

And all m tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtledove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon ! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! 
How it swells ! 
How it dwells 
On the Future ! how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 

Of the bells, bells, bells. 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells— 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! 



III. 



Hear the loud alarum bells — 
Brazen bells ! 
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! 
In the startled ear of night 
How they £ :ream out their affright ! 
Too much horrified to speak. 



144 THE BELLS. 

They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune. 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire. 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic 
fire, 
Leaping higher, higher, higher. 
With a desperate desire. 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit or never. 
By the side of the pale-faced moon. 
Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 
What a tale their terror tells 

Of Despair ! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 
What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 
By the twanging. 
And the clanging. 
How the danger ebbs and flows ; 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling 
And the wrangling. 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the 
bells— 

Of the bells— 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells,— 
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells 



THE BELLS. i45 



Hear the tolling of the bells — 
Iron bells! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody 
compels ! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone ! 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people — ah, the people — 
They that dwell up in the steeple. 

All alone. 
And w^ho tolling, tolling, tolling, 

In that muffled monotone. 
Feel a glory in so rolling 
On the human heart a stone — 
They are neither man nor woman — 
They are neither brute or human — 
They are Ghouls: 
And their king it is who tolls ; 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls. 
Rolls 
A paean from the bells ! 
And his merry bosom swells 

With the psean of the bells ! 
And he dances and he yells ; 



146 THE BELLS. 

ICeeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the paean of the bells — 
Of the bells: 
Keeping time, time, time. 
In a sort of Runic rh37me. 

To the throbbing of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells— 

To the sobbing of the bells ; 
Keeping time, time, time. 

As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme. 

To the rolling of the bells, — 
Of the bells, bells, bells,— 
To the tolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells— 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 



TO HELEN. 

I SAW thee once — once only — years ago : 

I must not say ho7U many — but 7iot many. 

It was a July midnight ; and from out 

A full-orbed moon, that, like thine owm soul, 

soaring, 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven. 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light. 
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
Upon the upturn' d faces of a thousand 
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe — 
Fell on the upturn' d faces of these roses 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death — 
Fell on the upturn' d faces of these roses 
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted 
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence 
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank 
I saw thee half-reclining ; while the moon 
Fell on the upturn' d faces of the roses, 
And on thine own, upturn' d — alas! in sorrow ! 



148 TO HELEN. 

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight — 
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow), 
That bade me pause before that garden gate, 
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? 
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept, 
Save only thee and me — (O Heaven!— O God ! 
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) 
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked — 
And in an instant all things disappeared. 
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted !) 
The pearly lustre of the moon M^ent out : 
The mossy banks and the meandering j^aths, 
The happy flowers and the repining trees, 
Were seen no more : the very roses' odors 
Died in the arms of the adoring airs. 
All — all expired save thee — save less than thou : 
vSave only the divine light in thine eyes — 
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 
I saw but them — they were the world to me. 
I saw but them — saw only them for hours — 
Saw only them until the moon went down. 
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten 
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres ! 
How dark a wo ! yet how sublime a hope ! 
How silently serene a sea of pride ! 
How daring an ambition ! yet how deep- 
How fathomless a capacity for love ! 

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, 
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud ; 



TO HELEN, 149 

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees 
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. 
They would not go — they never yet have gone. 
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, 
77^^'jhave not left me (as my hopes have) since. 
They follow me — they lead me through the years. 
They are my ministers — yet I their slave. 
Their office is to illumine and enkindle — 
My duty, to be saved by their bright light. 
And purified in their electric fire, 
And sanctified in their elysian fire. 
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), 
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to 
In the sad, silent watches of my night ; 
While even in the meridian glare of day 
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant 
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun ! 



A VALENTINE. 

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous 
eyes, 

Brightly expressive of the twins of Leda, 
Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies 

Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. 
Search narrowly the lines ! — they hold a treasure 

Divine — a talisman — an amulet 
That must be worn at hca^^t. Search well the 
measure — 

The words — the syllables ! Do not forget 
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor ! 

And yet there is in this no Gordian knot 
Which one might not undo without a sabre. 

If one could merely comprehend the plot. 



(To discover the names in this and the foUowing poem, 
read the first letter of the first line in connection with the 
second letter of the second line, the third letter of the th:rd 
line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end. It has 
not been thought necessary to retain the American spell- 
ing, Lada for Leda.) 



A VALENTINE. 151 

Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering 

Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus 
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing 

Of poets by poets — as the name is a poet's too. 
Its letters, although naturally lying 

Like the knight Pinto — Mendez Ferdinando — 
Still form a synonym for Truth— Cease trying! 

You will not read the riddle, though you do the 
best you ca7i do. 



AN ENIGMA, 

"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, 

"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. 

Through all the flimsy things we see at once 

As easily as through a Naples bonnet — 

Trash of all trash ! — how can a lady don it ? 

Yet heavier far than ^^our Petrarchan stuff — 

Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff 

Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.' 
And, veritably, Sol is right enough. 
The general tuckermanities are arrant 
Bubbles — ephemeral and so transparent — 

But tins is, now — you may depend upon it — 
Stable, opaque, immortal — all by d nt 
Of the dear names that lie concealed within't. 



TO 



Not long ago, the writer of these lines, 

In the mad pride of intellectuality, 

Maintained "the power of words" — denied that 

ever 
A thought arose within che human brain 
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue : 
And now, as if in mockery of that boast, 
Two words — two foreign soft dissyllables — 
Italian tones, made only to be murmured 
By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew 
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill," — 
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, 
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of 

thought, 
Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions 
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel, 
(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's crea- 
tures"). 
Could hope k) utter. And I ! my spells are broken. 
The pen falls powerless from my shivering Land. 
With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee, 
I cannot write — I cannot speak or think — 
Alas, I cannot feel ; for 'tis not feeling. 



154 TO . 

This standing motionless upon the golden 
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, 
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, 
And thrilling as I see, upon the right. 
Upon the left, and all the wa^^ along. 
Amid empurpled vapors, far away 
To where the prospect terminates — tliee only. 



TO MY MOTHER. 

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, 

The angels, whispering to one another, 
Can find, among their burning terms of love, 

None so devotional as that of " Mother," 
Therefore by that dear name I long have called 
you — 

You who are more than mother unto me, 
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death in- 
stalled you, 

In setting my Virginia's spirit free. 
My mother — my own mother, who died early. 

Was but the mother of myself ; but you 
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, 

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew 
By that infinity with which my wife 

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. 



ELDORADO. 

Gaily bedight, 

A gallant knight, 
In sunshine and in shadow, 

Had journeyed long, 

Singing a song, 
In search of Eldorado. 



But he grew old — 
This knight so bold — 

And o'er his heart a shadow 
Fell as he found 
No spot of ground 

That looked like Eldorado. 



And as his strength 
Failed him at length. 
He met a pilgrim shadow — 
" Shadow," said he, 
" Where can it be— 
This land of Eldorado ?" 



ELDORADO. 157 

•' Over the Mountains 

Of the Moon, 
Down the Valley of the Shadow, 

Ride, boldly ride," 

The shade replied, — 
If you seek for Eldorado ! " 



TO . 

I HEED not that my earthly lot 

Hath— little of Earth in it— 
That years of love have been forgot 

In the hatred of a minute : — 
I mourn not that the desolate 

Are happier, sweet, than I, 
But 'Ca.oX you sorrow for my fate 

Who am a passer-by. 



TO M. L. S . 

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning — 

Of all to whom thine absence is the night — 

The blotting utterly from out high heaven 

The sacred sun — of all who, weeping, bless thee 

Hourly for hope — for life — ah ! above all. 

For the resurrection of deep-buried faith 

In Truth — in Virtue — in Humanity — 

Of all who, on Despair's unhallowed bed 

Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen 

At thy soft-murmured w^ords, ' ' Let there be 

light ! " 
At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled 
In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes — 
Of all who owe thee most— whose gratitude 
Nearest resembles worship — oh, remember 
The truest— the most fervently devoted. 
And think that these weak lines are written by 

him — 
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think 
His spirit is communing with an angel's. 



FOR ANNIE. 

Thank Heaven ! the crisis — 

The danger is past, 
And the lingering illness 

Is over at last — 
And the fever called " Living' 

Is conquered at last. 



Sadly, I know 

I am shorn of my strength, 
And no muscle I move 

As I He at full length— 
But no matter! — I feel 

I am better at length. 



And I rest so composedly, 

Now, in my bed, 
That any beholder 

Might fancy me dead — 
Might start at beholding me, 

Thinking me dead. 



FOR ANNIE. i6i 

The moaning and groaning, 

The sighing and sobbing, 
Are quieted now. 

With that horrible throbbing 
At heart: — ah, that horrible, 

Horrible throbbing ! 

The sickness — the nausea — 

The pitiless pain — 
Have ceased, with the fever 

That maddened my brain — 
With .the fever called " Living " 

That burned in my brain. 

And oh ! of all tortures 

That toiture the worst 
Has abated — the terrible 

Torture of thirst, 
For the naphthaline river 

Of Passion accurst: — 
I have drank of a water 

That quenches all thirst: — 

Of a water that flows, 

With a lullaby sound, 
From a spring but a very few 

Feet under ground — 
From a cavern not very far 

Down under ground. 



i62 FOR ANNIE. 

And ah ! let it never 

Be foolishly said 
That my room it is gloomy 

And narrow my bed ; 
For man never slept 

In a different bed — 
And, to sit'ep, you must slumber 

In just such a bed. 

My tantalized spirit 
Here blankly reposes, 

Forgetting, or never 
Regretting its roses — 

Its old agitations 

Of myrtles and roses: 

For now, while so quietly 

Lying, it fancies 
A holier odor 

About it, of pansies — 
A rosemary odor, 

Commingled with pansies — 
With rue and the beautiful 

Puritan pansies. 

And so it lies happily, 

Bathing in many 
A dream of the truth 

And the beauty of Annie — 
Drowned in a bath 

Of the tresses of Annie. 



FOR ANXIE. 163 

She tenderly kissed me, 

vShe fondly caressed, 
And then I fell gently 

To sleep on her breast — 
Deeply to sleep 

From the heaven of her breast. 



When the light was extinguished 
She covered me v^arm, 

And she prayed to the angels 
To keep me from harm — 

To the queen of the angels 
To shield me from harm. 



And I lie so composedly. 

Now in my bea, 
(Knowing her love) 

That you fancy me dead — 
And I rest so contentedly, 

Now, in my I ed, 
(With her love at my breast) 

That you fancy me dead — 
That you shudder to look at me, 

Thinkino: me dead : — 



But my heart it is brighter 

Than all of the many 
Stars in the sky, 



1 64 FOR ANNIE. 

For it sparkles with Annie- 
It glows with the light — 

Of the love of my Annie — 
With the thought of the light 

Of the eyes of my Annie. 



ULALUME. 

The skies they were ashen and sober; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere — 

The leaves they were withering and sere ; 
It was night in the lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year ; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid region of Weir — 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

Here once, through an alley Titanic, 

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — 
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 

These were days when my heart was volcanic 
As the scoriae rivers that roll — 
As the lavas that restlessly roll 

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 
In the ultimate climes of the pole — 

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere- 
Our memories were treacherous and sere — 



1 66 ULALUME. 

For we knew not the month was October, 

And we marked not the night of the year — 
(Ah, night of all nights in the year !) 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber — 

(Though once we had journeyed down here)- 

Rememberecl not the dank tarn of Auber, 

Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 
And star-dials pointed to morn — 
As the star-dials hinted of morn — 

At the end of our path a liquescent 
And nebulous lustre was born, 

Out of w^hich a miraculous cresceat 
Arose with a duplicate horn — 

Astarte's bediamonded crescent 

Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said — " She is warmer than Dian : 

She rolls through an ether of sighs — 

She revels in a region of sighs : 
She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

These cheeks, where the w^orm never dies, 
And has come past the stars ot the Lion 

To point us the path to the skies — 

To the Lethean peace of the skies — 
Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

To shine on us with her bright eyes — 
Come up through the lair of the Lion, 

With love in her luminous eyes." 



ULALUME. 167 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

Said — " Sadly this star I mistrust — 
Her pallor I strangely mistrust: — 

Oh, hasten ! — oh, let us not linger ! 

Oh, fly! — let us fly! — for we must." 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 

Wings until they trailed in the dust — 

In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

Plumes till the}^ trailed in the dust — 
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 

I replied — " This is nothing but dreaming: 

Let us on by this tremulous light! 

Let us bathe in th's crystalline light! 
Its Sibyllic splendor is beaming 

With Hope and in Beauty to-night: — 

See ! — it flickers up the sky through the night ! 
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 

And be sure it will lead us aright — 
We safely may trust to a gleaming 

That cannot but guide rs aright. 

Since it flickers up to Heaven through the 
night." 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her. 
And tempted her out of her gloom — 
And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 

But were stopped by the door of a tomb — 
By the door of a legended tomb ; 



i68 ULALUME. 

And I said — " What is written, sweet sister, 
On the door of this legended tomb ? " 
She replied — " Ulalume — Ulahime — 
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume ! " 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 

As the leaves that were crisped and seie — 
As the leaves that were withering and cere : 

And I cried — " It was surely October 
On this very night of last year 
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here- 
That I brought a dread burden down here- 
On this night of all nights in the year, 
Ah ! what demon has tempted me here ? 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — 
This misty mid region of Weir — 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 



ANNABEL LEE, 

It was many and many a year ago, 

In a kingdom by the sea, 
That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee; 
And this maiden she lived with no other thought 

Than to love and be loved by me. 

/ was a child and she was a child, 

In this kingdom by the sea : 
But we loved with a love that was more than 
love — 

I and my Annabel Lee; 
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 

Coveted her and me. 

And this was the reason that, long ago, 

In this kingdom by the sea, 
A wind blew out of a cloud, chiUing 

My beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
So that her highborn kinsmen came 

And bore her away from me. 
To shut her up in a sepulchre 

In this kingdom by the sea. 



I70 ANNABEL LEE. 

The ange's, not half so happy in heaven, 

Went envying her and me — 
Yes I — that was the reason (as all men know, 

In this kingdom by the sea) 
That the wind came out of the cloud by night, 

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love 

Of those who were older than we — 

Of many far wiser than we — 
And neither the angels in heaven above, 

Nor the demons down under the sea, 
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: 

For the moon never beams, without bringing 
me dreams 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
And the stars never rise, but I feci the bright eyes 

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
And s >, the all night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling, — my darling, — my life and my 
bride, 

In her septdchre there by the sea, 

In her tomb by the side of the sea. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no de- 
sign to be either thorough or profound. While dis- 
cussing very much at random the essentiality of 
what we call Poetry, my principal purpose wall be 
to cite for consideration some few of those minor 
English or American poems which best suit my 
own taste, or which, upon my ow^n fancy, have left 
the most definite impression. By "minor poems" 
I mean, of course, poems of little length. And 
here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few 
words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, 
which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has al- 
ways had its influence in my own critical estimate 
of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not 
exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," 
is simply a flat contradiction in terms. 

I need scarcely observe that a poehi deserves its 
title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the 
soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this 
elevating excitement. But all excitements are, 
through a psychal necessity, transient. That de- 
gree of excitement which would entitle a poem to 
be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout 
a composition of any great length. After the lapse 
of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails — 

(171) 



172 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

a revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in effect, 
and in fact, no longer such. 

There are, no doubt, many who have found diffi- 
culty in reconciling the critical dictum that the 
"Paradise Lost" is to be devoutly admired 
throughout, with the absolute impossibility of 
maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of 
enthusiasm which that critical dictum would de- 
mand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded 
as poetical only when, losing sight of that vital 
requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it 
merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve 
its Unity — its totality of effect or impression — we 
read it (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, 
the result is but a constant alternation of excite- 
ment and depression. After a passage of what we 
feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a 
passage of platitude which no critical prejudgment 
can force us to admire ; but if, upon completing the 
work, we read it again, omitting the first book — 
that is to say, conmiencing with the second — we 
shall be surprised at now finding that admirable 
which we before condenmed — that damnable which 
we had previously so much admired. It follows 
from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or abso- 
lute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a 
nullity — and this is precisely the fact. 

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive 
proof, at least very good reason, for believing it 
intended as a series of lyrics ; but, granting the 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



173 



epic intention, I can say only that the work is 
based in an imperfect sense of Art. The modern 
epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but 
an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the 
day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any 
time, any very long poem luere popular in reality — 
which I doubt — it is at least clear that no very long 
poem will ever be popular again. 

That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris 
paribus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubt- 
edly, when we thus state it, a proposition suffi- 
ciently absurd — yet we are indebted for it to the 
Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing 
in mere size, abstractly considered — there can be 
nothing in mere bulk, so far as a volume is con- 
cerned, which has so continuously elicited admi- 
ration from these saturnine pamphlets ! A moun- 
tain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical 
magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with 
a sense of the sublime — but no man is impressed 
after this fashion by the material grandeur of even 
"The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies have not 
instructed us to be so impressed by it. As yet, 
they have not insisted on our estimating Lamartine 
by the cubic foot, or Pollock by the pound -but 
what else are we to infer from their continual prat- 
ing about "sustained effort"? If, by "sustained 
effort," any little gentleman has accomplished an 
epic, let us frankly commend him for the effort — 
if this indeed be a thing commendable— but let us 



174 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. 
It is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to 
come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art 
rather by the impression it makes — by the effect it 
produces— than by the time it took to impress the 
effect, or by the amount of "sustained effort" 
which had been found necessary in effecting the im- 
pression. The fact is, that perseverance is one 
thing and genius quite another — nor can all the 
Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By 
and by, this proposition, with many which I have 
been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In 
the meantime, by being generally condemned as fals- 
ities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths. 

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem ma)^ be 
improperly brief Undue brevit}' degenerates into 
mere epigrammatism. A vo'y short poem, while 
now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never 
produces a profound or enduring, effect. There 
nuist be the steady pressing down of the stamp 
upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought innum- 
erable things, pungent and spirit-stirring, but in 
general they have been too imponderons to stamp 
themselves deeply into the public attention, and 
thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown 
aloft only to be whistled dowu the wind. 

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue 
brevity in depressing a poem, in keeping it out of 
the popular view, is afforded by the following ex- 
quisite little Serenade : — 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 175 

I arise from dreams of thee 

In the first sweet sleep of night 
When the winds are breathing low, 

And the stars are shining bright. 
I arise from dreams of thee, 

And a spirit in my feet 
Has led me — who knows how ? — 

To thy chamber-window, sweet ! 

The wandering airs they faint 

On the dark the silent stream — 
The champak odors fail 

Ivike sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
The nightingale's complaint, 

It dies upon her heart, 
As I must die on thine, 

O, beloved as thou art ! 

O, lift me from the grass ! 

I die, I faint, I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 

On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 

My heart beats loud and fast : 
O ! press it close to thine again, 

Where it will break at last ! 

Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines, 
yet no less a poet than Shelley is their author. 
Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination 
will be appreciated by all, but by none so 



176 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from 
sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in the aro- 
matic air of a southern midsummer night. 

One of the finest poems by Willis, the very best 
in my opinion which he has ever written, has no 
doubt, through this same defect of undue brevity, 
been kept back from its proper position, not less in 
the critical than in the popular view : — 

The shadows lay along Broadway, 

'Twas near the twilight-tide— 
And slowly there a lady fair 

Was walking in her pride. 
Alone walk'd she ; but, viewlessly, 

Walk'd spirits at her side. 

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet. 

And Honor charm'd the air ; 
And all astir looked kind on her, 

And called her good as fair — 
For all God ever gave to her 

She kept with chary care. 

She kept with care her beauties rare 

From lovers warm and true— 
For heart was cold to all but gold, 

And the rich came not to woo — 
But honor'd well her charms to sell. 

If priests the selling do. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 177 

Now walking there was one more fair — 

A slight girl, lily-pale ; 
And she had unseen company 

To make the spirit quail — 
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn, 

And nothing could avail. 

No mercy now can clear her brow 
From this world's peace to pray, 

For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, 
Her woman's heart gave way ! — 

But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven, 
By man is cursed alway ! 

In this composition we find it difficult to recog- 
nize the Willis who has written so many mere 
"verses of society." The lines are not only richly 
ideal but full of energy, while they breathe an 
earnestness, an evident sincerity of sentiment, for 
which we look in vain throughout all the other 
works of this author. 

While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit 
in poetry prolixity is indispensable, has for some 
years past been gradually dying out of the public 
mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it 
succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long 
tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has 
already endured, may be said to have accomplished 
more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature 
than all its other enemies combined. I allude to 



178 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed, 
tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that 
the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every 
poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral, and by 
this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be 
adjudged. We Americans especially ha\ e patron- 
ized this happy idea, and we Bostonians very es- 
pecially have developed it in full. We have taken 
it into our heads that to write a poem simply for 
the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to have 
been our design, would be to confess ourselves 
radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and 
force : — but the simple fact is that would we but 
permit ourselves to look into our own souls we 
should immediately there discover that under the 
sun there neither exists nor can exist any work 
more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, 
tlian this very poem, this poem per se, this poem 
which is a poem and nothing more, this poem 
written solely for the poem's sake. 

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever in- 
spired the bosom of man, I would nevertheless 
limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation. 
I would limit to enforce them. I would not en- 
feeble them by dissipation. The demands of Truth 
are severe. She has no S}mpathy with the myrtles. 
All that which is so indispensable in Song is pre- 
cisely all that with which she has nothing whatever 
to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to 
wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 179 

truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of 
language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We 
must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we 
must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, 
is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be 
blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and 
chasmal difference between the truthful and the 
poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory- 
mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these 
differences, shall still persist in attempting to recon- 
cile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and 
Truth. 

Dividing the world of mind into its three most 
immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure 
Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place 
Taste in the middle because it is just this position 
which in the mind it occupies. It holds intimate 
relations with either extreme ; but from the Moral 
Sense is separated by so faint a difference that 
Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its 
operations among the virtues themselves. Never- 
theless we find the offices of the trio marked with 
a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect con- 
cerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the 
Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is regardful of 
Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the 
obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste con- 
tents herself with displaying the charms, waging 
war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deform- 
ity, her disproportion, her animosity to the fitting, 



i8o THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

to the appropriate, to the harmonious, in a word, to 
Beauty. 

An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of 
man is thus plainly a sense of the Beautiful. This 
it is which administers to his delight in the mani- 
fold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments 
amid which he exists. And just as the lily is re- 
peated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the 
mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of 
these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and 
sentiments a duplicate source of delight. But this 
mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply 
sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with 
however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, 
and sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments 
which greet hitn in conmion with all mankind — he, 
I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There 
is still a something in the distance which he has 
been unable to attain. We have still a thirst un- 
quenchable, to allay which he has not shown iis the 
crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immor- 
tality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an 
indication of his perennial existence. It is the de- 
sire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appre- 
ciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort 
to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ec- 
static prescience of the glories beyond the grave, 
we struggle by multiform combinations among the 
things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of 
that Loveliness whose very elements perhaps apper- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. i8i 

tain to eternity alone. And thns when by Poetry, 
or when by Music, the most entrancing of the 
poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, 
we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, 
through excess of pleasure, but through a certain 
petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp 
now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, 
those divine and rapturous joys of which through 
the poem, or through the music, we attain but 
brief and indeterminate glimpses. 

To struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveli- 
ness — this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly 
constituted — has given to the world all that which 
it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to 
understand and to feel as poetic. 

The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop 
itself in various modes — in Painting, in Sculpture, 
in Architect, in the Dance— very especially in 
Music — and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, 
in the composition of the Landscape Garden. Our 
present theme, however, has regard only to its 
manifestation in words. And here let me speak 
briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself 
with the certainty that Music, in its various modes 
of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a 
moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected — is 
so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply 
silly who declines its assistance, I will not now 
pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in 
Music perhaps that the soul most nearly attains the 



i82 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic 
Sentiment, it struggles— the creation of supernal 
Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime 
end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are 
often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that 
from an earthly harp are stricken notes which 
cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And 
thus there can be little doubt that in the union of 
Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall 
find the widest field for the Poetic development. 
The old Bards and Minnesingers had advantages 
which we do not possess — and Thomas Moore, 
singing his own songs, was, in the most legitimate 
manner, perfecting them as poems. 

To recapitulate then : — I would define, in brief, 
the Poetry of words as The Rythmical Creation of 
Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intel- 
lect or with the Conscience it has onl}' collateral 
relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern 
whatever either with Dut}^ or with Truth. 

A few words, however, in explanation. That 
pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most 
elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I main- 
tain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In 
the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it pos- 
sible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or ex- 
citement of the soul, which we recognize as the 
Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distin- 
guished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of 
the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excite- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 183 

ment of the Heart, I make Beauty, therefore — 
using the word as inclusive of the sublime— I make 
Beauty the province of the poem, simply because 
it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be 
made to spring as directly as possible from their 
causes : — no one as yet having been weak enough 
to deny that the peculiar elevation in qi^estion is at 
least most readily attainable in the poem. It by 
no means follows, however, that the incitements 
of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the 
lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a 
poem, and with advantage ; for they may subserve 
incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes 
of the work : but the true artist will always con- 
trive to tone them down in proper subjection to 
that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real 
essence of the poem, 

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I 
shall present for your consideration, than by the 
citation of the Proem to Longfellow's "Waif: " — 

The day is done, and the darkness 
Falls from the wings of Night, 

As a feather is wafted downward 
From an eagle in his flight. 

I see the lights of the village 

Gleam through the rain and the mist, 

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, 
That my soul cannot resist ; 



1 84 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 



Come, read to me some poem. 
Some simple and heartfelt lay, 

That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
And banish the thoughts of day. 

Not from the grand old masters. 
Not from the bards sublime, 

Whose distant footsteps echo 
Through the corridors of Time. 

For, like strains of martial music, 
Their mighty thoughts suggest 

Life's endless toil and endeavor ; 
And to-night I long for rest. 

Read from some humbler poet. 

Whose songs gushed from his heart. 

As showers from the clouds of summer, 
Or tears from the eyelids start ; 

Who through long days of labor, 

And nights devoid of ease. 
Still heard in his soul the music 

Of wonderful melodies. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 185 

Such songs have power to quiet 

The restless pulse of care, 
And come like the benediction 

That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 

The poem of thy choice, 
And lend to the rhyme of the poet 

The beauty of thy voice. 

And the night shall be filled with music, 
And the cares that infest the day 

Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal awa\'. 

With no great range of imagination, these lines 
have been justly admired for their delicacy of ex- 
pression. Some of the images are very effective. 
Nothing can be better than — 



the bards sublime, 

Whose distant footsteps echo 
Down the corridors of Time. 



The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. 
The poem on the whole, however, is chiefly to be 
admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, 
so well in accordance with the character of the 
sentiments, and especially for the ease of the 
general manner. This " ease " or naturalness, in a 



1 86 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

literary style, it has long been the fashion to re- 
gard as ease in appearance alone — as a point of 
really difficult attainment. But not so : — a natural 
manner is difficult only to him who should never 
meddle with it — to the unnatural. It is but the re- 
sult of writing with the understanding, or with the 
instinct, that the tone, in composition, should 
always be that which the mass of mankind would 
adopt — and must perpetually vary, of course, with 
the occasion. The author who, after the fashion of 
Ilie North American Review, should be upon all 
occasions merely " quiet," must necessarily upon 
many occasions be simpl}' silly, or stupid ; and has 
no more right to be considered "easy" or "nat- 
ural " than a Cockney exquisite, or than the 
sleeping Beauty in the waxworks. 

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so 
much impressed me as the one which he entitles 
"June." I quote only a portion of it : — 



There, through the long, long summer hours, 

The golden light should lie, 
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers 

Stand in their beauty by. 
The oriole shovild build and tell 
His love-tale, close beside my cell ; 

The idle butterfly 
vShould rest him there, and there be heard 
The housewife bee and humming bird. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 187 

And what, if cheerful shouts at noon, 

Come, from the village sent. 
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon. 

With fairy laughter blent ? 
And what if, in the evening light, 
Betrothed lovers walk in sight 

Of my low monument ? 
I would the lovely scene around 
Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 



I know, I know I should not see 
The season's glorious show, 
Nor would its brightness shine for me ; 

Nor its wild nuisic flow ; 
But if, around my place of sleep, 
The friends I love should come to weep. 

They might not haste to go. 
vSoft airs and song, and light and bloom, 
Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 

These to their soften'd hearts should bear 
The thought of what has been. 

And speak of one who cannot share 
The gladness of the scene ; 

Whose part in all the pomp that fills 

The circuit of the summer hills, 
Is— that his grave is green ; 

And deeply would their hearts rejoice 

To hear again his living voice. 



1 88 THE POETIC PRLNCIPLE. 

The rhythmical flow here is even voluptuous — 
nothing could be more melodious. The poem has 
al\va3's affected me in a remarkable manner. The 
intense melancholy which seems to well up, per- 
force, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful .say- 
ings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the 
soul— while there is the truest poetic elevation 
in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleas- 
urable sadness. And if, in the remaining compo- 
sitions which I shall introduce to you, there be 
more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let 
me remind you that (how or why we know not) 
this certain taint of sadness is inseparably con- 
nected with all the higher manifestations of true 
Beauty. It is, nevertheless, 

A feeling of sadness and longing 

That is not akin to pain. 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible 
even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as 
" The Health " of Edward Coote Pinkney : — 

I fill this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon ; 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 189 

To whom the better elements 

And kindly stars have given 
A form so fair that, like the air, 

'Tis less of earth than heaven. 

Her every tone is music's own. 

Like those of morning birds. 
And something more than melody 

Dwells ever in her words ; 
The coinage of her heart are they. 

And from her lips each flows 
As one may see the burden 'd bee 

Forth issue from the rose. 

Affections are as thoughts to her, 

The measures of her hours ; 
Her feelings have the fragrancy. 

The freshness of young flowers ; 
And lovely passions, changing oft, 

So fill her, she appears 
The image of themselves by turns, — 

The idol of past years ! 

Of her bright face one glance will trace 

A picture on the brain, 
And of her voice in echoing hearts 

A sound must long remain ; 
But memory, such as mine of her, 

So very much endears, 
When death is nigh my latest sigh 

Will not be life's, but hers. 



I90 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

I fill'd this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon — 
Her health ! and would on earth there stood, 

Some more of such a frame, 
That life might be all poetry. 

And weariness a name. 

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have 
been born too far south. Had he been a New 
Englander, it is probable that he would have been 
ranked as the first of American lyrists by that 
magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled 
the destinies of American Letters, in conducting 
the thing called The North American Review. 
The poem just cited is especially beautiful ; but 
the poetic elevation which it induces we must refer 
chiefly to our sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. 
We pardon his hyperboles for the evident earnest- 
ness with which they are uttered. 

It was by no means my design, however, to ex- 
patiate upon the merits of what I should read you. 
These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boc- 
calini, in his Advertisements from Parnassus, 
tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very 
caustic criticism upon a very admirable book : — ■ 
whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of 
the work. He replied that he only busied himself 
about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, hand- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



191 



ing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him 
pick out all Ihe chaff for his reward. 

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the 
critics — but I am by no means sure that the god 
was in the right. I am by no means certain that 
the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly 
misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, 
may be considered in the light of an axiom, which 
need only be properly put, to become self-evident. 
It is not excellence if it require to be demonstrated 
as such : — and thus to point out too particularly 
the merits of a work of Art, is to admit that they 
are not merits altogether. 

Among the "Melodies" of Thomas Moore is 
one whose distinguished character as a poem 
proper seems to have been singularly left out of 
view. I allude to his lines beginning — " Come, 
rest in this bosom." The intense energy of their 
expression is not surpassed by anything in Byron. 
There are two of the lines in which a sentiment is 
conveyed that embodies the all in all of the Di- 
vine passion of Love — a sentiment which, perhaps, 
has found its echo in more, and in more passionate, 
human hearts than any other single sentiment ever 
embodied in words : — 

Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer, 
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is 

still here ; 
Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o'ercast. 
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last. 



192 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



Oh ! what was love made for, if 'tis not the same 
Through joy and through torment, through glory 

and shame ? 
I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart, 
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art. 

Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments of bliss, 
And thy Angel I'll be, 'mid the horrors of this, — 
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy s'eps to 

pursue. 
And shield thee, and save thee, — or perish there 

too! 

It has been the fashion of late days to deny Moore 
Imagination, while granting him Fancy — a distinc- 
tion originating with Coleridge — than whom no 
man more fully comprehended the great powers of 
Moore. The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so 
far predominates over all his other faculties, and 
over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, 
very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. 
But never w^as there a greater mistake. Never was 
a grosser wTong done the fame of a true poet. In 
the compass of the English laiiguage I can call to 
mind no poem more profoundly — more weirdly 
imaginative, in the best sense, than the lines com- 
mencing — "I would I were by that dim lake" — 
which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I 
regret that I am unable to remember them. 

One of the noblest — and, speaking of Fancy — 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



193 



one of the most singularly fanciful of modern 
poets, was Thomas Hood. His "Fair Ines " had 
always for me an inexpressible charm : — 

O saw ye not fair Ines ? 

She's gone into the West, 
To dazzle when the sun is down, 

And rob the world of rest. 
She took our da34iglit with her, 

The smiles that we love best, 
With morning blushes on her cheek, 

And pearls upon her breast. 

O turn again, fair Ines, 

Before the fall of night, 
For fear the moon should shine alone, 

And stars unrivall'd bright ; 
And blessed will the lover be 

That walks beneath their light, 
And breathes the love against thy cheek 

I dare not even write ! 

Would I had been, fair Ines, 

That gallant cavalier. 
Who rode so gaily by thy side, 

And whisper'd thee so near ! 
Were there no bonny dames at home, 

Or no true lovers here. 
That he should cross the seas to win 

The dearest of the dear ? 
13 



194 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

I saw thee, lovely Ines, 

Descend along the shore, 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 

And banners waved before ; 
And gentle youth and maidens gay, 

And snowy plumes they wore ; 
It would have been a beauteous dream, 

If it had been no more ! 

Alas, alas, fair Ines, 

She went away with song. 
With Music waiting on her steps, 

And shoutings of the throng ; 
But some were sad and felt no mirth, 

But only Music's wrong. 
In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell, 

To her you've loved so long. 

Farewell, farewell, fair Ines, 

That vessel never bore 
So fair a lady on its deck. 

Nor danced so light before, — 
Alas for pleasure on the sea, 

And sorrow on the shore ! 
The smile that blest one lover's heart 

Has broken many more ! 

"The Haunted House," by the same author, is 
one of the truest poems ever written, — one of the 
truest, one of the most unexceptionable, one of the 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



95 



most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme and in 
its execution. It is, moreover, powerfully ideal — 
imaginative. I regret that its length renders it un- 
suitable for the purposes of this lecture. In place 
of it permit me to offer the universally appreciated 
" Bridge of Sighs : " — 

One more Unfortunate, 
Weary of breath. 
Rashly importunate 
Gone to her death ! 

Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care ;— 
Fashioned so slenderly, 
Young and so fair ! 

Look at her garments 
Clinging like cerements ; 
Whilst the wave constantly 
Drips from her clothing ; 
Take her up instantly. 
Loving, not loathing. 

Touch her not scornfully ; 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently and humanly ; 
Not of the stains of her, 
All that remains of her 
Now is pure w'omanly. 



196 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

Make uo deep scrutiny 
Into ber mutiny 
Rash and un dutiful ; 
Past all dishonor, 
Death has left on her 
Only the beautiful. 

Where the lamps quiver 

So far in the river, 

With many a light 

PVom window and casement 

From garret to basement, 

She stood, with amazement, 

Houseless by night. 

The bleak wind of March 
Made her tremble and shiver 
But not the dark arch, 
Or the black flowing river : 
Mad from life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery 
Swift to be hurl'd— 
Anywhere, anywhere 
Out of the world ! 

In she plunged boldly, 
No matter how coldly 
The rough river ran, — 
Over the brink of it, 
Picture it, — think of it, 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 197 

Dissolute man ! 
Lave ill it, drink of it 
Then, if you can ! 



Still, for all slips of hers, 
One of Bve's family — 
Wipe those poor lips of hers 
Oozing so clammily. 
Loop up her tresses 
Escaped from the comb, 
Her fair auburn tresses ; 
Whilst wonderment guesses 
Where was her home ? 



Who was her father ? 
Who was her mother ? 
Had she a sister ? 
Had she a brother ? 
Or was there a dearer one 
Still, and a nearer one 
Yet, than all other ? 

Alas ! for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the sun ! 
Oh ! it was pitiful ! 
Near a whole city full, 
Home she had none ! 



198 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

Sisterly, brotherly, 
Fatherly, motherly, 
Feelings had changed : 
Love, by harsh evidence. 
Thrown from its eminence ; 
Even God's providence 
Seeming estranged. 

Take her up tenderly ; 
Lift her with care ; 
Fashion'd so slenderly, 
Young and so fair ! 
Ere her limbs frigidly 
Stiffen too rigidly, 
Decently , — kindly, — 
Smooth and compose 

them ; 
And her eyes, close them, 
Staring so blindly ! 

Dreadfully staring 
Through muddy impurity. 
As when with the daring 
Last look of despairing 
Fixed on futurity. 

Perishing gloomily, 
Spurred by contumely, 
Cold inhumanity, 
Burning insanity, 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 199 

Into her rest, — 

Cross her hands humbly, 

As if praying dumbly, 

Over her breast ! 

Owning her weakness, 

Her evil behavior, 

And leaving, with meekness. 

Her sins to her Saviour ! 

The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable 
than its pathos. The versification, although car- 
rying the fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, 
is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild in- 
sanity which is the thesis of the poem. 

Among the minor poems of Ivord Byron is one 
which has never received from the critics the praise 
which it undoubtedly deserves : — 

Though the day of my destiny's over, 

And the star of my fate hath declined. 
Thy soft heart refused to discover 

The faults which so many could find ; 
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, 

It shrunk not to share it with me, 
And the love which my spirit hath painted 

It never hath found but in thee. 

Then when nature around me is smiling, 
The last smile which answers to mine, 

I do not believe it beguiling. 

Because it reminds me of thine ; 



200 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

And when winds are at war with the ocean, 
As the breasts I beheved in with me, 

If their billows excite an emotion, 
It is that they bear me from thee. 

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered, 

And its fragments are sunk in the wave, 
Though I feel that my soul is delivered 

To pain — it shall not be its slave. 
There is many a pang to pursue me : 

They may crush, but they vsliall not contemn- 
They may torture, but shall not subdue me — 

'Tis of thee that I think — not of them. 

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, 

Though woman, thou didst not forsake, 
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, 

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, - 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me. 

Though parted, it was not to fly. 
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, 

Nor mute, that the world might belie. 

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, 
Nor the war of the many with one — 

If my soul was not fitted to prize it, 
'Twas folly not sooner to shun : 

And if dearly that error hath cost me. 
And more than I once could foresee, 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 201 

I have found that whatever it lost me, 
It could not deprive me of thee. 

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, 

Thus much I at least may recall, 
It hath taught me that which I most cherished 

Deserved to be dearest of all : 
In the desert a fountain is springing. 

In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
And a bird in the solitude singing, 

Which speaks to my spirit of thee. 



Although the rhythm here is one of the most diffi- 
cult, the versification could scarcely be improved. 
No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It 
is the soul-elevating idea that no man can consider 
himself entitled to complain of Fate while in his 
adversity he still retains the unwavering love of 
w^oman. 

From Alfred Tennyson, although in perfect sin- 
cerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever 
lived, I have left myself time to cite only a very 
brief specimen. I call him, and think him the 
noblest of poets, not because the impressions he 
produces are at all times the most profound — Jiot 
because the poetical excitement which he induces 
is at all times the most intense — but because it is 
at all times the most ethereal — in other words, the 
most elevating and most pure. No poet is so little 



202 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is 
from his last long poem, "The Princess : " — 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the underworld. 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken 'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in lyife, the days that are no more. 

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect 
manner, I have endeavored to convey to you my 
conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



203 



purpose to suggest that, while this Principle itself 
is strictly and simply the Human Aspiration for 
Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle 
is always found in an elevating excitement of the 
soul, quite independent of that passion which is the 
intoxication of the Heart, or of that truth which is 
the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to 
passion, alas ! its tendency is to degrade rather 
than to elevate the soul. Love, on the contrary — 
Love — the true, the divine Eros — the Uranian as 
distinguished from the Dionsean Venus — is un- 
questionably the purest and truest of all poetical 
themes. And in regard to Truth, if, to be sure, 
through the attainment of a truth we are led to 
perceive a harmony where none was apparent be- 
fore, we experience at once the true poetical effect ; 
but this effect is referable to the harmony alone, 
and not in the least degree to the truth which 
merely served to render the harmony manifest. 

We shall reach, however, more immediately a 
distinct conception of what the true Poetry is, by 
mere reference to a few of the simple elements 
which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical 
effect. He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes 
his soul in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven, in 
the volutes of the flower, in the clustering of low 
shrubberies, in the waving of the grain-fields, in the 
slanting of tall eastern trees, in the blue distance 
of mountains, in the grouping of clouds, in the 
twinkling of half-hidden brooks, in the gleaming 



204 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

of silver rivers, in the repose of sequestered lakes, 
in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He 
perceives it in the songs of birds, in the harp of 
^olus, in the sighing of ihe night-wind, in the 
repining voice of the forest, in the surf that com- 
plains to the shore, in the fresh breath of the 
woods, in the scent of the violet, in the voluptuous 
perfume of the hyacinth, in the suggestive odor 
that comes to him at eventide from far-distant un- 
discovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and 
unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts, in 
all unworldly motives, in all holy impulses, in all 
chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. 
He feels it in the beauty of woman, in the grace of 
her step, in the lustre of her eye, in the melody of 
her voice, in her soft laughter, in her sigh, in the 
harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply 
feels it in her winning endearments, in her burning 
enthusiasms, in her gentle charities, in her meek 
and devotional endurances, but above all, ah, far 
above all, he kneels to it, he worships it in the 
faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the alto- 
gether divine majesty of her love. 

Let me conclude by the recitation of yet another 
brief poem, one very different in character from 
any that I have before quoted. It is by Motherwell, 
and is called "The Song of the Cavalier." With 
our modern and altogether rational .ideas of the 
absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not pre- 
cisely in that frame of mind best adapted to sym- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 205 

pathize with the sentiments, and thus to appreciate 
the real excellence of the poem. To do this fully 
we must identify ourselves in fancy with the soul 
of the old cavalier : — 

A steed ! a steed ! of matchless speede ! 

A sword of metal keene ! 
Al else to noble heartes is drosse — 

Al else on earth is meane. 
The neighynge of the war-horse prowde, 

The rowleing of the drum, 
The clangour of the trumpet lowde — 

Be soundes from heaven that come. 
And oh ! the thundering presse of knightes, 

When as their war-cryes welle, 
May tole from heaven an angel bright, 

And rowse a fiend from hell. 

Then mounte ! then mounte, brave gallants all, 

And don your helmes amaine : 
Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honour, call 

Us to the field againe. 
No shrewish teares shall fill your eye 

When the sword-hilt's in our hand, — 
Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe 

For the fayrest of the land ; 
Ivet piping swaine, and craven wight, 

Thus weepe and puling crye. 
Our business is like men to fight, 

And hero-like to die ! 



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